How the big Central Railway catering scam unfolded

Mumbai: The Right to Information or RTI activist Ajay Bose knew Indian Railways was running into losses worth thousands of crore rupees and firmly believed something fishy underlined these monetary deficits.

Bose approached the Central Railway or CR authorities headquartered at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Station with a written plea under RTI Act that mandates a public establishment to reveal certain information sought in an application.

“I filed the application in July 2016, but didn’t get a reply from CR. It appeared they wanted to cover something up," The Hindu quoted Bose as saying. He then contacted appellate authority with a plea that then asked CR officials to explain things with a show-cause missive.

The report cited reply to RTI query that said select food items were bought at astronomical prices. CR catering department purchased 1 kg of curd at Rs 9,720. Bose said that he filed RTI plea after he learned that the catering department was running into huge losses.

Food items purchased by railways' catering department are stored at central railway's stock room at CST station and then are distributed to Jan Ahar canteens run by Indian Railways' Catering and Tourism Corporation and railway base kitchens and trains like Deccan Queen, Kurla-Hazrat Nizamuddin Express.

An official at CR said that huge purchase price shown in the reply to the RTI application might have been due to typing error which he said would investigate.