Moneylife Foundation’s Samir Zaveri Railway Helpline on Saturday felicitated Constable Azim K Shaikh from Thane Police for preventing a catastrophic accident and disruption of railway service on 7 November 2014. After spotting a detached iron plate on the railway track near Parsik Tunnel, Constable Sheikh, using a red coloured bag rushed and stopped an upcoming local train in the nick of time.
After presenting a plaque on behalf of commuters of Mumbai, Samir Zaveri, who has made it his mission to ensure that railway accident victims get swift attention, so that many lives are saved during the first ‘golden hour’, said, “We salute Constable Azim K Shaikh for displaying rare courage and spontaneously responding to the dire situation, going beyond the call of duty, thereby averting a major disaster that has probably saved hundreds of lives and a massive disruption of the railways services.”
Several prominent citizens and activists were present during the felicitation and lauded the bravery shown by Constable Shaikh. Some NGOs like Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Police Reforms Watch also sent an appreciation letter for Constable Shaikh. The appreciation letter sent by Maja Daruwala, Director of CHRI and Dolphy D’souza, Convenor for PRW was read out by Mr D’souza.
Indian Railways, especially the Mumbai suburban railway network does a phenomenal job in transporting over 75 lakh people back and forth every day in an extremely timely manner. However, everyday 25-30 rail commuters meet with an accident and 10-12 of them lose their lives. This highlights why a large organisation like Indian Railways, with enormous pressure to maintain timing and schedules needs strong additional support from citizens and brave hearts like Samir Zaveri and Constable Shaikh.
Keeping this in mind, Moneylife Foundation set up the Samir Zaveri Railway Helpline to help railway commuters in distress.
Earlier this year, the Samir Zaveri Railway Helpline sought urgent intervention from Mallikarjun Kharge, the then Railway Minister through former MP Milind Deora for reducing the gap between platforms and trains and for making available ambulances at all suburban railway stations.
Moneylife Foundation and Samir Zaveri Railway Helpline have formed a group in Facebook, Coalition for Safe Rail Travel-CSRT to help like-minded citizens and activists connect with each other.
