Stop giving contaminated water to passengers, the Delhi High Court told the Indian Railways today, and questioned its decision to hike fares when it was not providing better services.

“Hundreds of thousands travel by trains and you are serving them contaminated water. Stop giving contaminated water to passengers. What enhanced services are you providing to increase fares?” a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar asked.

It directed that the matter be placed before the Railway Board Chairman who shall give a report on the quality of water made available to passengers.

The report be placed before the Ministry of Railways, the court said and listed the matter for further hearing on February 19 next year.

The bench said it wanted that the best and same treatment be given to every citizen.

The bench said the issue assumes importance and deserved greatest attention and that it wanted the railways to examine it and take a decision on its own without the court getting into it.

The court was hearing a plea by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation, which has sought “an independent and preferably court-monitored probe into the neglect of the quality of the drinking water supply and the manipulations in the award of contracts for supply of chlorination plants for past several years”.

Advocates Prashant Bhushan and Govind Jee, appearing for the NGO, said the railways was neither adhering to the standards laid down for drinking water by the Bureau of Indian Standards nor following the Indian Railway Medical Manual.

The lawyers said water being provided on stations and trains was not even being tested for presence of E.coli bacteria.

The NGO has contended that while the Indian Railways, which has an independent water supply system all over the country, is able to keep trains running by meeting the requirement of water for washing and cleaning of trains, tracks and platforms, it is “failing to supply safe and wholesome drinking water to millions of railway passengers and its staff who live in the railway colonies”.

It alleged that Indian Railways has “continued to neglect the quality of water supply for so many years” as records which have come to light recently show that water quality has been very unsatisfactory for the past several years.

The plea alleges that “the water treatment infrastructure for disinfection of water by chlorination has almost completely collapsed and level of contamination in the entire supply network from the source to the top is alarming.”

A state-owned French rail company today submitted its report on upgrading the Delhi-Chandigarh railway route and reducing travel time between the two cities by almost an hour and 30 minutes.

The 245-km corridor project will be the first semi-high speed venture of the Railways with French aid which would enable some trains to run at a maximum speed of 200 kmph.

“SNCF, France’s state-owned rail company, started the study in January 2016 and submitted the final report today,” Railway spokesperson Anil Saxena said.

Sources said that in its over 1500-page report, the company stated that the upgrading of the route would cost more than Rs. 10,000 crore. The figure, however, could not be confirmed officially.

The journey, which is at present covered in three hours and 30 minutes by the Shatabdi, travelling at a maximum speed of 110 kmph, will take around two hours and two minutes with a halt in Panipat and Ambala after the upgrade.

The project is expected to be launched in January 2018 when French President Emmanuel Macron is likely to visit India, officials said.

Naxals have shot dead the son of a contractor whom they had abducted from a rail construction site in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, around 180 kms from state capital Raipur.

KL Dhruv, the Superintendent of Police in Kanker, said that the body of 38-year-old Ramesh Jain was found this morning at a forest near Rekhabat village.

Ramesh’s father had bagged the contract for cutting of trees in the forest area for laying tracks as part of the Dallirajhra-Rowghat railway project and transportation of logs to the forest department’s depot.

On Saturday, a group of 30-40 armed Naxals reached the construction site in the forest close to Rekhabat between Rowghat and Tadoki and asked workers to leave the place. They then set fire to four trucks and a loader machine engaged in the construction of railway line before taking Ramesh with them. “Later, they shot him dead in the nearby forest,” Mr Dhruv said.

Upon getting information, the SP and other officials reached the spot today and sent the body for postmortem. A search operation was launched in the region to trace the ultras, the police official said.

The work in the first phase, covering a 95-km route from Dallirajhara to Rowghat, is in progress with 17 kms of tracks upto Gudum commissioned for passenger train traffic.

According to police, the Naxals have been opposing the project since its inception, fearing that the construction of the rail route will speed up the development work in Bastar thereby uprooting them from the region.

A 23-year-old vendor was allegedly raped onboard a passenger train when it was passing Bherkhera area under Bhopal railway division of the West Central Railway, a GRP official said today.

The incident occurred in a toilet of a sleeper coach of Amarkantak Express (Durg-Bhopal) yesterday.

“The woman is an unauthorised vendor who sells popcorn on train,” Habibganj Government Railway Police (GRP) incharge sub-inspector BL Sen said.

The woman hails from Budhni in Sehore district of the state.

He said the accused has been identified as Jitu (25) who hails from Bhopal.

No arrest has been made in the case so far.

“The woman reached Bhopal yesterday but returned to her home in Budhni last evening without lodging a complaint as the accused had threatened her of dire consequences,” Mr Sen said.

The accumulated deficit in upkeep of infrastructure due to “decades of neglect” is taking a toll on the Indian Railways, chairman of the Railway Board Ashwani Lohani has said, referring to an accident in Uttar Pradesh on Friday.

In a Facebook post last night, Mr Lohani, who had rushed to the accident site at Manikpur in Chitrakoot district, said an action plan needs to be put in place to address the problem.

Naxals today set ablaze four vehicles and a loader machine engaged in the construction of railway line in Chhattisgarh’s insurgency-hit Kanker district, police said.

The incident took place this afternoon between Rowghat and Tadoki villages under Koyalibeda police station limits where track-laying work is underway as part of the Dallirajhra-Rowghat railway project, a senior police official told news agency PTI.

A group of armed Naxals reached the spot and asked workers to leave the place, said police. The rebels then torched four trucks and a loader machine before taking a 40-year-old man, son of one of the project contractors, with them, the officer said.

Security forces have been rushed to the spot and further details are awaited, he said. The construction of Dallirajhara-Rowghat-Jagdalpur broad-gauge railway project covering 235 km would allow transportation iron ore from the Naxal-affected area in north Bastar.

Work on the first phase covering a 95 km route from Dallirajhara to Rowghat is in progress with 17 km of tracks up to Gudum commissioned for passenger train traffic.