Linen stolen from AC coaches in Indian Railways: In 4 years, 1.27 crore bedsheets, towels, blankets, pillows

Every night, about 8 lakh AC passengers across the Indian Railways network tuck themselves into linen bedrolls, typically two bedsheets, a blanket, a pillow, a pillow cover and a face towel — a service that comes with the ticket. And as every trip ends, some of them, about one in every 1,000 passengers, walk away with at least one bedroll item, an investigation by The Indian Express reveals.

The newspaper filed Right to Information (RTI) applications with all 69 divisions of the Indian Railways. Replies were obtained from 54 divisions across 16 of 18 Railway zones, some shared partial information. These records show that from January 2022, when bedroll services had fully resumed after the pandemic, to May 2026, at least 1.27 crore bedroll pieces were stolen — mainly by passengers, officials said. The data, when compiled year-wise, shows a 56% rise in such thefts from 2022 to 2025.

Set against the sheer scale of what the Railways hands out every single day, it’s a drop in the ocean. But that’s exactly what makes the numbers interesting: call it theft or temptation, the data is less an indictment of the housekeeping staff than a snapshot of passenger behaviour too.

The theft has cost bedroll contractors an estimated Rs 104.51 crore in the over four-year period, the RTI data suggests — money that coach attendants employed by the contractors say is mostly recovered from their salaries.

Railways went back to providing bedrolls after Covid. (Express Archive)

A Ministry of Railways spokesperson said the issue is of “serious concern” and “efforts are being made to prevent linen theft and take action against offenders”. The spokesperson also said the Railways “cannot establish” any evidence of staff collusion in the theft.

A compilation of the data shows that 10 divisions across seven zones account for most of the overall linen theft — 67% of the total. They include Bikaner, Jodhpur and Jaipur (covering Rajasthan); Ranchi; Delhi; Mumbai; Ahmedabad; Sonpur and Danapur (covering Bihar); and Bilaspur.

The numbers point to telling trends:

* Towels top in stolen items. The face towel, which is the easiest to carry, tops the list of most items stolen overall: 46.54 lakh in four years, followed by bedsheets (41.13 lakh), pillow covers (23.59 lakh), blankets (12.95 lakh) and pillows (2.76 lakh).

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* Bikaner, Ranchi are the worst-hit. According to the RTI replies, by sheer volume of total linen theft, the worst-hit divisions are Bikaner with 25.76 lakh items, Ranchi with 9.31 lakh, and Delhi with 8.21 lakh. Next in line: Mumbai with theft of 8.17 lakh bedroll items; Jodhpur with 8.09 lakh, Ahmedabad with 6.94 lakh and Danapur with 5.72 lakh.

*Until May; total includes 4,700 items from 2021; (Source: RTI)

Scratch the surface further and it gets more interesting.

The available breakdown of items stolen from the 10 divisions across seven zones that are worst-hit shows that bedsheets (12.42 lakh) top the list in Bikaner, accounting for nearly half of the division’s total theft of items during this period. There’s more:

* Towels dominate the theft kitty in a majority of the 10 divisions, including Delhi (4.78 lakh, 58% of total theft in the division), Ranchi (3.88 lakh, 42%), Mumbai (3.57 lakh, 44%), Danapur (3.37 lakh, 59%), Ahmedabad (3.22 lakh, 46%) and Jaipur (2.52 lakh, 56%).

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* Pillow covers top the list in Sonpur (1.58 lakh, 39% of total theft in the division) and Bilaspur (1.55 lakh, 34%).

* Blankets are the primary target in Jodhpur, with over 3.4 lakh pieces taken, or 42% of the total items stolen by passengers in the division.

Now the big picture:

* The Bikaner division leads when it comes to a spike in such thefts since 2022, from 2.99 lakh to 12.34 lakh items, followed by Sonpur, from 36,448 to 3.01 lakh.

Other divisions with a notable increase: Danapur, up 78,095 items, marking a 91% rise since 2022; Dhanbad, up 55,906 items (91%); Ranchi, up 77,332 items (45%); and Jodhpur, up 94,679 items (46%).

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* Delhi leads in theft dip. The capital cut theft by 79% (3.27 lakh to 68,013 items), followed by Ahmedabad, down 83%, and Samastipur, down 86%.

* No theft has been reported from two southern divisions — Tiruchirappalli and Palakkad. The Adra division of South Eastern Railway also reported no theft but it’s a freight-only division with no AC passenger coaches to lose linen from.

Challenge: ‘Additional sets required’

The Indian Express reached out to the Railways with an emailed questionnaire identifying key trends from the RTI data, and asking about preventive measures and the challenges such thefts pose.

“Generally linen (items) are collected by linen attendants after de-boarding of passengers from trains. The responsibility of account of linens in Railway coaches is of the agency who has been deployed for linen distribution. For any shortage, cost recovery is done from the bills of the agency,” the Railways spokesperson said.

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The challenge, the spokesperson said, was that “due to theft of linen, additional linen sets are required to meet the shortfall”.

Then again, behind these numbers is also a story that isn’t quite as interesting for the people who actually pay the price for the theft. While the linen items are the property of the Railways, its divisions engage contractors to manage and supply them in trains.

The Indian Express spoke to several contractors who acknowledged the problem, with one saying it had forced them to scrap their contract with the Railways altogether. Attendants said they bore the brunt of the menace since, in most cases, it was their salary the contractors cut to cover the cost of the stolen linen.

“The theft of linen is a real problem for us,” said a supervisor of a bedroll distribution firm in the Solapur division of Central Railway.

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“A significant portion of the earnings is deducted from the bill for these cases. We had a three-year contract with the Railways, but we had to end it in 14 months due to delay in payment. We had deployed around 60 staff in coaches for the distribution in 5 trains. For every stolen item, they recover Rs 115 for pillow, Rs 198 for bedsheet, Rs 55 for pillow cover, Rs 48 for face towel and Rs 343 for blanket,” the supervisor said.

According to a 2015 Railway Board circular, the cost of a “missing” linen item is recovered at 100% of purchase price if it’s less than half-way through its codal life — the codal life, for instance, of a blanket is two years — 50% if past that mark, or a flat 75% if the service life can’t be determined.

A linen attendant, working on a superfast train in East Central Railway, said that they now provide towels only when a passenger demands it.

“There are seven attendants in this train, with each managing an AC coach. We are paid on a daily basis, and I get Rs 700 for a day’s work. So if I work for 30 days without a break, I am entitled to about Rs 21,000 in a month. But that doesn’t happen because every month around 2,000-3,000 is deducted for linen theft. During March and April, 17 bedsheets, three blankets, and nine pillows were lost on my watch,” the attendant said.

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The RTI requests by this newspaper did not cover two of the 18 Railway zones: South Coast Railway (SCoR), a newly constituted zone, and Kolkata Metro, which doesn’t run conventional AC trains.

Even among the 54 divisions that did respond, the picture is incomplete: 14 divisions did not provide theft figures for all linen categories, and nine divisions did not provide the cost of the items lost. In other words, the true financial toll is almost certainly higher than the estimated Rs 104.51 crore.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Over 1.27 crore bedroll items — bedsheets, towels, blankets, pillows — have gone missing from Indian Railways AC coaches between January 2022 and May 2026, RTI data reveals.

Thefts have risen 56% since 2022, with roughly one in every 1,000 AC passengers walking away with at least one linen item per trip.

The cost to bedroll contractors over four years is estimated at ₹104.51 crore — most of which is quietly recovered from the salaries of coach attendants earning as little as ₹700 a day.

Face towels are the most stolen item nationally (46.54 lakh), while Bikaner leads all divisions with 25.76 lakh items missing — and a staggering 4x spike since 2022.

Delhi bucked the trend, cutting theft by 79%; two southern divisions — Tiruchirappalli and Palakkad — reported zero theft.

The Railways says staff collusion cannot be established, but acknowledges that stolen linen forces procurement of “additional sets” — a cost ultimately borne by the public.