A passenger’s claim that a bomb was on board the Korba-bound Wainganga Superfast Express halted the train at Rajnandgaon railway station in Chhattisgarh for about ninety minutes on Thursday afternoon. A bomb disposal squad and a dog squad searched the train and found no explosive device. The man who raised the alarm was later taken into custody by the Government Railway Police.
How the threat was made
The train, numbered 12252 and running from Korba toward Yeshwantpur, was standing at platform number 2 of Rajnandgaon station around 2:30 pm on Thursday when a passenger approached the loco pilot. He told the pilot a bomb on board would go off within ten minutes, then left the platform without his luggage, according to ETV Bharat‘s report, which cited station master R K Burman.
Station staff alerted the railway administration and police as soon as the claim was made, and the train was held back as a precaution while the platform area was cordoned off. According to the Amar Ujala bureau’s report from Rajnandgaon, the driver passed the warning on to railway officials immediately after hearing it.
The search and response
Multiple agencies responded: the Railway Protection Force, the Government Railway Police, local police, a bomb disposal squad and a dog squad, with senior railway officials also present at the station, according to Amar Ujala. Patrika corroborated the deployment and the dog-squad search in its own report on the incident.
The squads searched the coaches of the Wainganga Superfast Express and the surrounding station premises. No explosive device was found. The search and the resulting halt kept the train at Rajnandgaon for roughly an hour and a half before it resumed its journey toward Yeshwantpur at around 4 pm.
Amar Ujala reported that a few other trains passing through the station were delayed slightly as a result of the alert, though it did not specify which services or by how long. Railway officials told the outlet that the administration was investigating the incident and had stepped up security vigilance at the station following the scare.
Why the man was detained
The passenger who made the claim was traced after he came back to the station to collect the luggage he had left behind. He was handed over to the Government Railway Police for questioning.
During questioning, he gave inconsistent accounts of where he was from, at different points naming Bilaspur and Bilha. GRP officials said his identity and the reason he raised the false alarm were still being verified.
Further details on the inquiry, including whether a case has been formally registered against him, had not been released as of this report. The Government Railway Police said questioning was continuing to establish his identity and his reason for being at the station.
Part of a wider pattern
Hoax bomb calls have disrupted several Indian trains in recent months. The Kamayani Express was halted in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa and the Jabalpur-Nizamuddin Shridham Express was stopped on its route, with both threats later declared hoaxes after security searches turned up nothing. The Rajnandgaon alert follows the same pattern: a verbal warning, a full search by bomb and dog squads, and an all-clear within a few hours.
What happens next
Railway officials said security vigilance at Rajnandgaon station has been increased in the wake of the scare. Whether the detained man faces formal charges will depend on what the ongoing GRP inquiry establishes about his identity and motive.
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