KOLKATA: Three persons, including a nine-year-old boy, were injured when a bullet ricocheted off the floor after a service
rifle went off due to careless handling by an RPF personnel at the Dum Dum
Metro station on Friday.
The incident occurred around 2pm while Sangita Basu (36) and her son Saptarshi were standing near the ticket counter and a change of guard was underway at the RPF posts nearby. One of the constables going off duty handed over his Insas 5.56 mm rifle to his replacement when the latter accidentally dropped it.
The gun went off as it hit the floor and a bullet ricocheted off the floor, splintered and hit Sangita, her son and a Metro official, Narayan Majumdar, standing nearby.
A Court of Inquiry has been ordered and the constable who dropped the rifle has been suspended. Senior RPF officers admitted that there was some ‘mishandling’ of the weapon. Had procedure been followed, this would never have happened given the safety features of the rifle developed by Rifle Factory Ishapore before the
Kargil War.
“We took immediate steps and requisitioned an ambulance from Noapara. Realising this would take time, the injured were taken to the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in taxis,” CPRO of Metro Railway, Indrani Banerjee, said.
All three were released from R G Kar Hospital after preliminary treatment. The mother-son duo then went to a private hospital off E M Bypass, from where doctors released them after a check-up.
The spot at Dum Dum station where the incidents took place