A 55-year-old school teacher had a miraculous escape after slipping an falling into the gap between the platform and a train at Karjat station on Thursday afternoon.

Karjat-resident Anand Kotagari was lucky as he was pulled out in the nick of time by an on-duty Railway Protection Force constable Arun Jadhav moments before the motion of the train and the impact of the slip would have pulled Kotagari further underneath the train. According to RPF officials, the incident happened at around 2 pm when the 17222 Kurla LTT-Kakinada express was moving into platform number 1 of Karjat station. In his hurry to enter one of the coaches so that he could secure a seat for his daughter who was supposed to travel on the train, Kotagari slipped and the lower half of his body was though the gap and inches away from the sides of the under-body of the train.

"Jadhav lunged forward and held Kotagari in such a way that Kotagari didn't slip further beneath the train. Thankfully the train was at a fairly low speed since it was entering the platform. That helped as well," said a senior RPF official. Officials said that Kotagari was shifted to a hospital nearby where he is being treated for minor injuries. The problem of people running and catching trains, despite various drives by the railways, continues to be a serious problem. The fact that in a city like Mumbai where tracks are shared by both suburban as well as long-distance trains, and where platforms are of unequal height. don't help matters either.

"In Mumbai the height of platforms are anything between 760mm to 900mm from the tracks. Moreover long-distance trains are about 10 feet and 6 inches wide whereas suburban trains are about 12 feet wide. Both these scenarios cause horizontal as well as vertical gaps between the platform and the under-body of the train. The chances of people slipping and falling into the gap is that much higher in Mumbai than most other places on the Indian railway network," said a railway official.