DUSHANBE, April 11 2013, Asia-Plus  -- A court in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour district is considering the wrongful termination case pitting twelve conductors against top managers of Tajik Railways (Tajik state railroad company).

Conductors’ lawyer, Saidbek Nouriddinov, says 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 have filed the wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the Tajik Railways top managers in the Shohmansour district court,” the lawyer said.

According to him his clients says 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.

“Conductors say that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) instituted criminal proceedings against one of those persons.  We do not know what happened to them after that, but my clients say that those two persons are now at large and they are now in Tajikistan.”

We will recall that 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.