An online petition prompted union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi to help facilitate comfortable train travel for a wheelchair bound woman.

Recently, the petition filed by a differently abled woman, Virali Modi, went viral on the internet. In her petition she writes, “I have been groped and manhandled three separate times by porters. They were helping me board the train because Indian trains are not wheelchair accessible. I am a disabled woman living in Mumbai who loves to travel. I have had to wear a diaper because I couldn’t use the train bathroom. And when I needed to change that diaper, I had no privacy and had to wait for hours for the lights to go off at night.”

The 26-year-old has drawn nearly 93,000 signatures from common citizens after she started the petition on February 2. Noticing this, Maneka Gandhi, on Monday, wrote to railway minister Suresh Prabhu requesting him to facilitate comfortable train travel for the disabled on a “mission mode”.

In her letter posted on the web, Gandhi wrote, “I have seen a petition by Virali Modi, a person with disability based in Mumbai. She says she has been facing a lot of problems during travel by rail and has pointed out various issues of accessibility at railway stations as well as trains for wheel chair bound persons. The ministry of railways under the leadership of Suresh Prabhuji has been conscious of this issue. However, keeping in view the desirability of facilitating comfortable travel for disabled persons, I am writing to Suresh Prabhuji to request him to take up the required changes in mission mode.”