A 39-year-old civic employee lay helplessly on railway tracks at Halisahar station in West Bengal after a train severed both his legs on Monday (2016-01-18) morning. Hundreds, including GRP and RPF personnel and commuters watched, yet no one raised a finger to help. After 20 minutes, another train crushed him to death.
“If the authorities had blocked train movement for a few minutes, he could have been rescued,“ said a witness. The railways denied any laxity and insisted that the victim, Laltu Pal, had died on the spot as soon as he was hit by the first train. But witnesses say he was trying to get away from the second train and managed to raise himself to a sitting position before he was run over.
Locals blocked the tracks for over three hours alleging callousness by railway authorities.
Laltu was walking on the tracks to reach platform 2 at 8.30am and did not notice the down Shantipur local headed towards him. “The passengers shouted out, but it was drowned by another train rolling into platform 3. He tried to jump away but his legs were severed,“ said Dipak Das, a tea stall owner.
A commuter ran to inform the stationmaster. Some locals said that a few commuters from platform 3 tried to reach him but were afraid of being run over by another train.
“After being informed, railway police recovered his body from the tracks and sent it for post-mortem,“ the official said.
Source: The Times of India, Kolkata dated 2016-01-19)
