dehradun

Updated: Apr 18, 2018 22:25 IST

A 43-year-old woman was run over by an oncoming train while she was fleeing from a monkey that had attacked her at Hempur depot railway station in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district, Wednesday, a senior official said.

Kamala Devi, a resident of Kosi Gate in Nainital’s Ramnagar area, was sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree at the station when a monkey jumped upon her, Parag Madhukar Dhakate, acting director of Corbett Tiger Reserve, said. Dhakate, quoting the local sources, said the simian attacked the woman when she tried to shoo it away. Panicked, the woman frantically ran towards the railway tracks when she was hit by an oncoming Moradabad-Ramanagar train, he said.

The wheel sliced her into two.

Kamla’s husband had died 10 years ago and she had been granted an ex-gratia job in the Military Engineer Services (MES). She used to commute by bus from Ramnagar to Hempur for work. She is survived by two sons and two daughters.

Bablu Chaudhary, the gram pradhan (village head) of nearby Gopipura village, who reached the spot soon after the accident, said there was rampant monkey menace in the area and it was only a matter of time before something untoward happened. “The monkeys roam around in packs of 100-200. Locals here change their routes out of fear. We have been asking the forest department to take measures to control the monkey population in the area but in vain,” Chaudhary said.

He claimed that there have been instances when the monkeys have pounced upon moving bikes, leading to riders falling off the vehicle.

Contacted, KS Bisht, ranger, Terai west, said that following complaints of the increased monkey menace in the area, the divisional forest officer has sought permission from the chief wildlife warden for catching and translocating the simians.

It may be mentioned that in 2015, some school students from Almora had written to the Uttarakhand High Court seeking security against the monkeys. Last year, an 11-year-old girl died of injuries she sustained while trying to escape a monkey attack in Nainital. The girl was playing inside her home when she saw a monkey enterin. She ran in panic and fell down, leading to her death.