Kannur: The Railways has dismissed two technical employees from the signal department for cutting signal wires over vendetta. Kakkodi native Praveen Raj (34) and Sulthan Bathery native Jinesh (33), both employees at Feroke Railway Station, have been terminated from their jobs.

After the incident that took place on March 24, 2021, they had been transferred to Mangaluru and Palakkad. The railway refused to consider their pleas that they had done it unintentionally after being drunk.

They cut the wires in five different places in the signal box on the railway track between Feroke and Vellayil. They exchanged the green signal with the yellow one.

As the signals were tampered with, 13 trains including cargo trains were delayed. The signal system was put back in place after almost two hours. It had been found in a detailed RPF probe that only those with great expertise and training could cut off the signal wires as they did.

The statements from the witnesses and the CCTV footage revealed that it was done by the employees in the department itself. During interrogation by the probe team, the accused admitted that they had cut the wire over their vendetta against Kozhikode Senior Section Engineer (Signal). The cases charged against them are for trying to endanger the lives of passengers and damage the signal system.

Usually, when the wires are cut, the system will show that the signal isn’t working. But they tampered with its working which made it impossible for the station officials to notice. Even when the green signal was given, the signal continued to emit yellow. The yellow signal shows the alert sign.