The Hindu: Players keen to put an end to Railways controversy

With reports of four Indian women’s hockey players mistreated by Indian Railways on their way back home from Rio creating a furore, the players themselves are keen to put an end to the entire issue. Interestingly, all four are Railway employees.

The four — Lilima Minz, Sunita Lakra, Deep Grace Ekka and Namita Toppo — were part of the Indian team that qualified for the Olympics after 36 years and were travelling from Ranchi to Rourkela on board the Bokaro-Alleppey Express after arriving from Rio.

“I know there are reports of us travelling on the floor of the train. But that is not true. What happened was that we didn’t have tickets but since we are Railway employees, we were allowed to board the train regardless. However, the TTE told us we had to wait for a couple of stations since the train was full and he could not ask a paying traveller to vacate seat. After about half an hour he allotted us seats,” Lilima said from Bhubaneswar, where the girls had been invited for a State government felicitation.

The Indian Railways issued a statement refuting the incident. “The news reports about women’s hockey team, after their return from Rio Olympics, being forced to sit on the floor is completely false. The players, on reaching the Ranchi airport, went to the station and took the train without any information to the Indian Railways, which would have been in a better position to make appropriate arrangements. However, when the players boarded the train, the TTE took only 20 minutes to make seats available to them,” the statement said.

The players also said that while officials offered to make alternate arrangements, they decided to board the first available train since they wanted to reach home early. “If it had been daytime, we could have thought of waiting. But it was already late evening and we have been away from home for more than two months. There were also several events planned for us across the State so we wanted to reach home as soon as possible,” the players added.

Sunita had earlier been quoted as saying that the TTE denied them seats before providing the same after about an hour but she said that her words had been twisted.