A female police officer and a male accomplice were arrested after they are alleged to have assaulted a train driver at a station in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital of Colombo on Tuesday night, a senior police official said.
The couple was furious since the long distance train from the southern town of Belliatte travelled at a slow speed to Colombo, Police Chief Inspector Ishantha Hapalathotuwa said.
The alleged incident occurred at the Maradana Railway Station that is situated in close proximity to a central police station.
The pair was detained by police following a complaint made by the train driver and were due to be produced before a local Magistrate later on Wednesday, he said.
However the police are treating the incident as a minor offence since the train driver did not sustain any injuries.
The female police officer is attached to the cultural sector of the Sri Lanka Police Department while the male accomplice is an employee at the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, CI Hapalathotuwa said.
The Government-owned train service in the Indian Ocean island nation is notorious for wild cat strikes go slow campaigns and other stoppages for the most flimsy reasons forcing thousands of commuters into inconvenience.
It was only the other day in early October that an unannounced wild cat strike was launched by a group of train guards following a fracas over a lighted cigarette.
The incident was a ‘home and home’ affair since it involved a guard and a security officer attached to the railway department.
The Sri Lanka railway department has long been considered a ‘sacred cow’ and there has been growing calls from the public and other organizations to privatize the service or restructure its operations in order to avoid inconvenience to the public.
The Government recently declared the railway department as an essential service and employees face the sack if they are found instigating or participating in unreasonable trade union action that would inconvenience commuters.
The bulk of the railway staff from station masters, guards, drivers signal operators and so on are among the highest paid public servants in the country and in addition to that they also receive other perks such as living quarter’s free travel and so on.
