Western railway seeks guidelines from board after Raees train journey mishap

It is alleged that the film team did not apprise the authorities about their exact plan during the journey.

A day after Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Raees’ train promotion left a man dead at Vadodara station, the Western Railway (WR) on Wednesday said it will approach the railway board for stringent guidelines to avoid repetition of such incidents even as it alleged that the film team did not apprise the authorities about their exact plan during the journey.

People throng Vadodra railway station to get a glimpse of actor Shah Rukh Khan on Monday.(IANS file photo)

“We are going to approach the railway board seeking stringent guidelines to avoid repetition of such incidents in the future. Any journey or promotional journey which compromises smooth operations of the railways will be dealt with sternly. We are going to take all precautionary measures to avert these incidents,” chief public relations officer of western railway Ravindra Bhakar said.

Read: Raees promotion: Railways to probe Vadodara station chaos as man dies after SRK visit

The railway board is the apex body which is vested with powers to oversee and manage the overall affairs of Indian railways.

“We gave him permission to promote the film within the coach. We were not informed that the actor would be attracting a crowd through his tweets and would be throwing gifts at them. Had we been informed about all this by the crew managers, we would certainly not have given permission for the same,” Bhakar said.

The railway ministry has ordered a probe into the incident, which has kicked up a row.

Farid Khan Pathan died of cardiac arrest as a massive crowd went berserk after Shah Rukh arrived at the Vadodara railway station on Monday night by August Kranti Rajdhani Express. He was accompanied by the film’s producer Ritesh Sidhwani, Sunny Leone and director Rahul Dholakia.

Pathan was a local politician and the relative of a journalist, who was travelling in the same train with Shah Rukh.

Two policemen were also injured as an estimated 15,000 people went out of control when the train halted in Vadodara and some of them started banging the window panes. The police had to resort to mild lathi-charge to control the situation.

Khan had boarded the train from Mumbai Central for Delhi as part of his promotional campaign ‘Raees by Rail’.