india

Updated: Aug 04, 2019 10:55 IST

A woman and her daughter were crushed to death on rail tracks in Mathura on Saturday after they fell from the Trivandrum Express while chasing a thief who stole one of their bags, the police said.

Meena Devi, 45, and Manisha, 21, who are from Durgapur in West Bengal, were jolted out of sleep around 4am when the thief pulled the emergency chain near Vrindavan Road station and jumped off as the train slowed down. On realising their bag had been pinched, the mother ran after the thief, followed by her daughter, and fell off the train in succession, the police quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

Jogender Kumar, superintendent of police (SP), Railways, Agra region, said Meena was found dead on the spot while her daughter was critically injured. She was taken to a local hospital nearby where she passed on, he said.

“Both bodies have been sent for post-mortem. It is not clear whether the women were crushed by the Trivandrum Express or the Sampark Kranti Express that passed on a nearby track at that time,” Kumar said.

According to the SP, the women had boarded the train at Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi and were travelling to Rajasthan’s Kota when the mishap happened. The woman’s 19-year-old son Akash, who was accompanying them, slept through the incident and got to know about the deaths when fellow passengers woke him up.

“According to eyewitnesses, an unidentified criminal took Meena’s bag, pulled the chain and jumped from the slowing train at about 4am. The woman, who woke up, chased the thief. She was followed by Manisha, but while the thief escaped, the women came under a train after falling from it,” Kumar said.

The Ernakulam-bound Trivandrum Express travels to Kota from Delhi via Mathura and Sawai Madhopur, railway officials said.

The SP said a case had been registered with the Government Railway Police (GRP), Mathura, against an unidentified person on a complaint from Akash. Two teams have been set up to probe the deaths. “We are yet to know what valuables were in the stolen bag,” he said.

Akash told reporters his family had boarded the train at Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday. “We were going to Kota to admit Manisha to a coaching institute when the tragedy happened,” he said.

In the evening, the SP transferred inspector Rajesh Kumar Dubey, the GRP in-charge of Mathura station, to Police Lines. A departmental probe has been ordered against Dubey for failing to curb crimes in areas under his jurisdiction. Inspector Subodh Kumar has been named the new in-charge of GRP Mathura.