2 MONTHS LATER, SWARNA SHATABDI RELEASED BY LUDHIANA COURT

LUDHIANA Two months after it was attached and became the property of a Ludhiana court, the Swarna Shatabdi Express (12030) was finally released on Wednesday and returned to the Railways.

The Railways had deposited, in the previous hearing on April 25, an amount of ₹73.9 lakh in the court for the pending land-acquisition compensation of complainant farmer Sampuran Singh.

Technically the court’s property, the train continued to ply as usual between Amritsar and New Delhi all this while.

Earlier, the court had given time to the Railways to pay the pending compensation of ₹1.05 crore as demanded by the farmer.

“The farmer calculated the pending compensation amount as ₹1.05 crore, but it actually was ₹73.9 lakh. The court has released our property now,” said Iqbal Singh, counsel for Railways.

It was on March 16 that the court had ordered attachment of the train after the railways failed to comply with the court’s order issued in 2015 to clear the farmer’s dues for his land acquired for the Ludhiana-Chandigarh railway line in 2007.

It had also ordered attachment of the office of the station master. Section engineer Pradeep Kumar had then got the train released on ‘superdari’ (interim custody).

The Railways had requested the court to release the train in the previous hearing.

They had stated that the court cannot order attachment of its property in the light of a Karnataka high court order.

They said the orders were issued in their absence; and they cited Section 187 of the Railway Act to argue that the train could not be attached.