By Abhik Deb
On Sunday, the railway police in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh arrested two men for a failed attempt at stealing an iron pole. In a press note, the police said that the two men, Sandeep Chauhan and Vijendra, were addicts who regularly committed minor thefts to buy alcohol and drugs.
Last Wednesday, they started to carry away a pole from railway property. But as a train approached, they fled, leaving the pole on the tracks.
On the face of it, this would appear to be a case of petty crime. But several news websites ran a report by the Press Trust of India news agency citing officials claiming that this was a case of sabotage. TV news anchors also claimed that an attempt at sabotage had been foiled.
These reports appeared after social media posts by Hindutva supporters asserting that the pole had been placed on the tracks as a conspiracy against the railways to cause an accident.
https://twitter.com/spgrpmoradabad/status/1837816318063685684
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.