Secunderabad: Stalls at station bear the brunt of furious protest

Secunderabad: Following a massive protest against the Agnipath scheme for recruitment of armed forces at the Secunderabad railway station on Friday morning, a mob entered and damaged the entire railway station and looted more than 250 commercial stalls present in the station.

Protestors also destroyed all the electric items of various catering stalls. Items that were damaged were refrigerators, coffee-making machines, counters, fans, water coolers and other items belonging to stalls. There were 250 stalls spread over the 10 platforms of the railway station, each platform had 25 stalls selling various food items, soft drinks, mobile phone chargers, earphone other items.

All the items including packed food products were looted leaving all the stalls empty. A South Central Railway (SCR) official said that heavy damage was caused to stalls, especially from platform number two to seven."

Speaking to The Hans India, a SCR official who takes care of all stalls at the Secunderabad railway station said, "Each stall had Rs 2 lakh worth products that was looted by the mob.They also broke all the stalls, removed electric items and threw them between the tracks. The structure of stalls was also badly damaged by breaking all the four side glasses of the stall."

A stall owner who was later seen collecting the remaining items like water bottles and other items, Radha Krishna said, "Cash from our counters was looted, we keep our stalls full with stock as the Secunderabad railway station is the major station in the State and thousands of passengers visit the station daily, but on Friday morning all our items were looted by protestors causing heavy loss to our business."