There are some people in our country who can stoop to the lowest level in order to get free food. This is embarrassing to hear but for them, it is just an ordinary thing. A 70-year-old man has been intentionally putting dead lizards in his food so that he could get free food from Indian Railways.
When it comes to getting freebies, some people have no qualms letting go of their self-respect, even if it means getting caught and shamed by millions.
The senior citizen identified as Surender Pal repeated the same tactic on several occasions before getting caught red-handed finally.
As per PTI, a senior divisional commercial manager was the first to smell something fishy in the repeated complaint of dead lizards from the same person. The officer also notified Indian Railways official after seeing the man’s plan to avail free food.
“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,” Basant Kumar Sharma, Senior DCM, Jabalpur, told PTI on phone.
As per the reports, Surender Pal was caught red-handed at Guntkal station and then he admitted and even recorded a video in which he said he was using a “fish which cured mental illness” for his techniques.
“I have done the 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,” he is heard saying in the video when officials asked him what he actually put in his food.
While the officials scolded him for ruining Indian Railway’s reputation, they did not punish him harshly.
Pal claimed that his father was a senior DCM and to which officials said it was not right for him to cheat on the railways which was like his own family.
It was still not sure whether Pal was ‘mentally unstable’ as he claimed or if he had “blood cancer”, but railway officials across the network are pretty sure to remember him for his tricks, officials said.
So far, Railways received around 10,000 complaints from passengers over bad quality of food served on trains and slapped with fines of about Rs 1.5 crore on vendors.