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Train from Pakistan — sanitised

Nirupama Subramanian

Unprecedented security puts passengers on the Samjhauta Express in a fix.

TWO METAL detectors and a dozen strapping gun-toting troopers of the Pakistan Rangers block the way on Platform No. 1 at Lahore Railway Station at the point where the rake for the 8 a.m. Lahore-Attari 402 Down, or the Pakistan-India Samjhauta Express, is stationed.

Leashed near the metal detectors are two huge Labradors. The sniffer dogs have already been through each of the 10 carriages of the train, and are now on duty to smell out suspicious baggage as it passes through first the metal detectors, and then through a scanner. Along with police, the Rangers, Pakistan's border security force, have combed "every compartment" of the train and have certified it as secure.

"In our South Asia, we always wake up after the incident, but we certainly don't want something like that to happen again," says a senior officer of the Rangers, who requested not to be named.

Starting from the metal detectors, the Rangers have sealed the platform to all except ticket-holding passengers, railways officials, policemen. No exceptions will be made, including for this correspondent.

"Sorry, please understand, we don't want to take any chances," the official says.

Ten days after the attack on the Samjhauta Express in India, Pakistan has implemented stringent measures for the security of the train, combing the train three hours before its departure at 8 a.m., posting guards on the platform as well in the train, and aside from the electronic scanning of bags, carrying out random checks on passengers. Considering the rush on the train and the amounts of baggage people carry with them, the new security procedures are a challenge, both for security agencies, and for passengers.

The incident at Panipat has not in the slightest deterred people from travelling on the train. It is not a comfortable train, and as events last month showed, nor is it the safest. The train takes almost 24 hours from Lahore to Delhi. The distance between Lahore and Attari is 27 km, but takes five hours, of which the running time is only one hour. The rest goes into customs and immigration formalities at Wagah. The wait at Attari is even longer, and it can take more than eight hours before the passengers complete the Indian border procedures and board the link train to Delhi. But at Rs.90 for the journey from Lahore to Attari through Wagah, and between Rs.115 and Rs.225 for the onward journey to Delhi, it is certainly the cheapest.

Almost everybody taking the train shares the identical opinion when it comes to assessing their safety on the journey, post-Panipat.

"Life and death are in the hands of the one above. If we die, we die, if we live, we reach our destination," says Zahida, a Pakistani who is headed to meet relatives in Lucknow. She planned long for this journey. "I am going after 27 years. For a long time I never got the visa. Now I have it, nothing can stop me."

Most people are plain relieved that the train continues uninterrupted even after the incident.

Wasim Shehzad from Multan is going for his niece's wedding in Jaipur. He's carrying a crockery set as a gift. "When I first heard about the attack, I thought there goes my trip, they will cancel the train now, but thankfully, they did not," he says.

Noor Begum, who is returning home to Roorkee in India after visiting relatives in Gujarat town in Pakistan's Punjab province, says with fervour in her tone: "May they never stop this train, it's the only hope for people like us who have family on both sides."

But the new regulations are not easy to come to terms with.

Inexplicably, tickets for the train have always been sold from only two hours before departure. No advance booking. The ticket counter is in a vast asbestos-roofed shed that leads to Platform No.1, from a side of the Lahore Railway Station that is clearly not its most well looked after part. At 6 am, people are pouring in through a narrow gate, pushing mountains of baggage on trolleys, carrying them on their heads or just dragging bags through the mud. Large groups of men and women wait while a family member queues up for the ticket.

A new system is in place from today, and people are struggling to understand it. First, stand in line for a ticket, to be issued only against a passport; then, stand in a second line for a reservation, which is also when the booking clerk manually writes down passport details in a big ledger. No more unreserved tickets. And no more tickets for onward journeys. That is a joint decision by the Railways of Pakistan and India. So, here in Lahore, passengers can buy tickets only up to Attari, unlike earlier when they could also buy tickets for the next leg of their journey, to Delhi, and to other destinations.

"This way, we can keep better track of who is boarding the train and from which point," said Station Master Mohammed Yousuf.

Ticketing done, passengers, helped by porters, and accompanied by gaggles of relatives and friends who have come to see them off, shove their bags towards Platform No.1. But a new shock awaits them. They must weigh their bags. Each person is allowed 35 kg, and excess is charged. Able-bodied family members take the weighty bags off trolleys and lug them to the scales one by one. Very few passengers are travelling within their baggage allowance. But it appears that as is the first day of the new rules, leniency rules. Passengers plead, and the officials are waiving 5 or 10 kg excess.

Halfway down Platform No.1, the metal detectors are not a surprise to the passengers, but having to part with family members at this point, much before the departure of the train, is a wrench. Also, as at airports, they have to leave behind their trolleys, and porters. Beyond the metal detectors, the platform looks like no other in South Asia. No crowds of people, no vendors, no people peering or shaking hands through windows, no sightseers. Only those with tickets and passports go through the metal detectors, dragging their huge bags behind them or carrying them on their heads towards the train and their allotted seats.

Over 700 passengers are on the train as it leaves Lahore. But some like Taiyyab Hussain from Gurgaon in India could not get a seat. And his 30-day visa will run out today. The Rangers are not listening to any argument. "No means no," says the trooper at the metal detector.

Hussain is distraught. He tried talking to senior officials, the stationmaster, the ticket checker. Nothing worked. "Earlier it was so much easier. You just bought an unreserved ticket and travelled. Now they have created more problems all around. I don't know what I'm going to do for my visa," he says, as the train pulls off, leaving behind a clean platform.

The Railway authorities have also barred passengers from boarding at Wagah, the train's next stop, a 40-minute journey from Lahore, nor can anybody get off the train here. Those in the train will disembark for customs and immigrations procedures and will board the train again. But no new passengers are to get on at this small station at the India-Pakistan border.

Despite the bar, entire families, who are in the same boat as Hussain, have hired taxis to drive them from Lahore through flowering mustard fields and bad roads to Wagah, hoping that the rules will be less tight at a rural station. It does not even have a proper entrance at the moment. No such luck. The Rangers have sealed off the platform at Wagah too.

"They will get used to the new system. It's for their own safety. We don't want a repetition of what happened in India," says a railways official at Wagah.

When the Samjhauta Express pulls out at 12.30 p.m. on its 15-minute run to Attari, officials have on their list 764 passengers — 531 Pakistanis, 232 Indians, and one `foreigner' — all identified and accounted for, but with the luggage still blocking the doors, passages, and all other available space in the carriages.

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