DUSHANBE, April 24 2013, Asia-Plus — A court in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour district that has considered the wrongful termination case pitting twelve conductors against top managers of Tajik Railways (Tajik state railroad company) has dismissed the lawsuit filed by the conductors.
Conductors’ lawyer, Saidbek Nouriddinov, says he has not yet received the copy of the ruling handed down by the court, and therefore, he does not know what it is justified by.
The lawyer, however, considers that the ruling is illegal. He further added that it could not be ruled out that pressure had been made on the judge.
We will recall that 22 conductors of the Dushanbe-Moscow train were dismissed after 27 kilograms of heroin were found hidden in the train on Russian territory on January 28 this year. Twelve of those dismissed conductors filed the wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the Tajik Railways top managers in the Shohmansour district court, demanding reinstatement of them in their jobs.
According to the lawyer, his clients say they have nothing to do with the heroin found in the train. “They say two additional conductors worked on the train on those days. My clients say those two conductors were men of the company management and most likely those two persons were involved in trafficking heroin,” Nouriddinov said.
Russian media sources reported on January 28 that 27 kilograms of heroin have been found hidden in the Dushanbe-Moscow train at the Aksaray crossing point in the Russian Astrakhan oblast. One of conductors was arrested on suspicion of having been involved in drug trafficking.
