April 2: The under-construction railway track in Biratnagar built with India’s assistance has been found to be of sub-standard quality. A section of the railway structure caved in due to normal rain and hailstones of Saturday night. The rainfall caused damages to an open culvert in between the railway tracks as well as a wall in the railway yard in Biratnagar-18.

Around 180 meters of the culvert, which was built to facilitate the flow of water in between the tracks, was damaged by the rain.

A representative of the contractor assigned to build the track said that the structure got damaged due to excessive rainfall. Sanjeev Dev of the contractor company said that a large amount of hailstones had gathered at the area where the damage occurred. As a result, the structure caved in, said Dev. He further claimed that the hailstones damaged the plaster of the wall because the size of the hailstones was exceptionally big. While he made such claim, New Business Age found that the plaster was very thin resulting in the damage.

The railway track is being built with the assistance from the Indian government as per an understanding reached between Nepal and India in 2010 to build railway structures in five different places.