BENGALURU: A 24-year-old IAS aspirant died on Tuesday morning after he came under the Hindupur-Bengaluru Passenger train near Gouribidanur railway station, about 78 km from Bengaluru. The deceased has been identified as G Jagadeesh of Mudugere village in Gouribidanur taluk.
Irate passengers on board the train attributed his death to the newly introduced Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU) train that replaced the earlier conventional train and demanded its reintroduction.
There are two versions of how engineering graduate Jagadeesh, who was taking coaching classes at the Jinendra Institute of Competitive Exams at Bengaluru’s Vijayanagar, met his fate. According to Railway Protection Force (RPF) sources, the train (No. 56524) which left Hindupur at 6.30 am, was packed to capacity and the youth was travelling on the footboard. “When the train turned near the curve just after leaving Gouribidanur station at 7 am, he slipped and fell under the tracks,” said a top official.
However, top officials in the Operations department of the Bengaluru Railway Division say that he was speaking on his mobile phone on the platform at the station. “When he suddenly noticed the train departing, he rushed to board the train. Holding his phone in one hand, he tried to jump on board the train using just one hand. He could not balance himself and slipped and fell in the space between the platform and the train and got crushed under the wheels,” said a top official.
The train was stopped immediately and the boy’s father, a BSNL employee, and a few locals, gave vent to their ire. “They were pacified by Railway Police and they allowed the train to depart after 20 minutes,” an RPF official said.
The train then passed Someshwara and Thondebhavi stations without any problem but when it neared Makalidurga railway station, a remote station 20 km from Gouribidanur, nearly 1,000 passengers on board the train stormed out of the train. “They squatted on the tracks and refused to allow it to depart. Angry passengers attributed Jagadeesh’s death to the MEMU train, which resulted in lesser space for passengers. They alleged that due to less space, he was forced to stand near the door, recalled a cop who was at the spot. The train finally left the station at 9.54 pm, after a delay of an hour and 54 minutes. Due to the protest, seven other trains were also delayed for about 1-2 hours.
A senior operations official said that a MEMU train had 12 coaches compared to a conventional train which had 15 coaches. “However, it can carry 1,800 passengers as each coach can accommodate one-and half times the number of passengers that a traditional rake can,” he said. “Vendors are pretty upset that the luggage berth has been removed in the MEMU train where they would keep all their bags.”