BENGALURU: A 36-year-old railway pointsman met a gory end in the line of duty on the railway tracks of Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna railway station (Bengaluru City) when his head got stuck in the circular buffers between a loco and a coach of the Basava Express as he was trying to couple them together. The incident happened at Platform Eight.
The impact of the hit is said to have caused internal bleeding in his head resulting in instant death.
Describing it as a very rare accident, top railway officials and doctors at the Railway Hospital said they had not come across such an incident in the Bengaluru Railway Division.
The mishap occurred around 4.35 pm when the victim, S Saravana Kumar, along with a colleague was trying to uncouple two coaches from the Basava Express (Train no. 17307) which had reached from Mysuru by coupling it with a loco at the end of the platform (known as Mysore End).
“This work of coupling locos and coaches is done a hundred times daily at the KSR railway station. There is enough space for the pointsman to stand on the side of the buffers without being affected in any way. Either Kumar had slipped and somehow his head came in between or he must have panicked and tried to leave through the middle portion when his head got stuck,” said a senior railway official.
Kumar, who joined Bengaluru Railway Division as a trackman in May 2012, became a pointsman three months ago and has just 12 days experience in this role, another official said.
Dr A Vasudevan, Additional Chief Medical Superintendent at the Railway Hospital, termed it as “compression head injury” which has resulted in internal bleeding that resulted in instant death. Speaking to The New Indian Express, he said,” As soon as the duty doctor received the call from the control, he rushed to the spot but the pointsman had suffered instant death due to the injuries suffered.”Saravana Kumar is a native of Needamanagalam taluk in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu. He is survived by his wife Durga Devi and two-and-a-half year old daughter Sadhana.