Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi (SR)

New Delhi, Jul 24: Railway officials, of late, were worried about increase in incidents of 'lizards' being found in railway food. The mystery was finally solved after it was found that a senior citizen, Surender Pal, in his 70s, was the serial offender, who contaminated his own meal to get free ones from the railways.

The matter came to light when a senior divisional commercial manager noticed the uncanny similarity in the modus-operandi in the cases that were transpiring for a while and alerted the latest railway division which fell prey to Surender Pal's trick.

Senior DCM, Jabalpur, Basant Kumar Sharma, told PTI, “He was the same person. He claimed to have found a lizard in the samosa he ate at Jabalpur station on July 14. Then he complained that a lizard has been found in his biryani at Guntkal station. I became suspicious and alerted the senior DCM and shared the man’s photo. He turned out to be 70 plus and did it for free meals.” Sharma said it seemed Pal was doing this for some time.

Pal confessed to his nasty prank after some senior official at the Guntkal station accosted him. The officials also recorded a video, in which Pal is heard not only confessing to the crime but also saying he has been using a “fish which cured mental illness” for his tricks. In the video, the railway officials at Guntkal station can be seen explaining to the man that railways is a national pride and it belonged to the public.

Pal was promised by the railway officials that no action would be taken against him if he promised to mend his ways. In the video, Pal can be heard admitting to the nasty prank he carried off to procure free meals from the railways and is also heard apologising for the same. Pal claimed he is mentally unstable and begged for forgiveness from the railway authorities, “I have done a wrong thing. I am an old man, I am mentally unstable, I have blood cancer. Please let me go. In Punjab, there is an ayurvedic medicine. I used a fish which cures bone diseases and mental illness,” said Pal.

Pal also claimed his father was a senior DCM, to which officials said it was not right for him to fraud the railways that was like his family. Officials said it was not clear whether Pal was mentally unstable as he claimed or if he really had 'blood cancer', but railway officials across the network are sure to remember him for his ingenuity.

Railways until last year received more than 7,500 complaints from passengers over bad quality of food served on trains. The railways, in turn, had imposed fines of Rs 15.5 million on vendors, warned 2,322 of them, terminated the contract of one and found 555 complaints unsubstantiated until October last year.