CHENNAI: In yet another incident exposing lack of safety for women EMU commuters, a 26-year-old woman software engineer was pushed down from the ladies compartment of a moving EMU train by a robber, who snatched her thali, on Monday night.
According to sources, N Muniswari, working in MEPZ, Tambaram, boarded the train at Tambaram Sanatorium station around 8:30 pm. When the train crossed Fort Station and slowed down before reaching Beach Station, Muniswari was attacked by a middle-aged man of wheatish complexion, according to her description, who tried to snatch her chain and other belongings. “I wrestled with him to get back my belongings, but he threw me off the train. I fell in the bushes near the track and hit the adjoining wall,” she said when this reporter visited her at the Stanley Hospital.
There were only a few other women passengers in the compartment at the time of the incident, but they were too shocked to react, she added.
Writhing in pain and soaked in blood, Muniswari called out for help and that was when a few passengers from a Beach-Velachery MRTS train waiting for the signal got down and took her to the Station Master’s cabin. Her husband rushed there on information and Muniswari was admitted to Stanley in the early hours of Tuesday. Due to the impact of hitting the wall, she had suffered a fracture in the left shoulder and bruises on her right palm.
“There was not even one RPF cop during the entire journey. I don’t know if the robber boarded the train at a station or was there in the coach all along. He was speaking in Hindi,” Muniswari recalled.
Her husband Navaraj, who works at Parry’s, was speaking to her on the phone when she was attacked and even heard her cries for help.
“I normally take a bus to home at Arumbakkam, but due to the strike on Monday, I took a train to Beach from where my husband was to pick me up,” she said.
A case was registered by the Government Railway Police (GRP). “We have constituted a special team and will prepare a sketch of the robber to nab him soon,” a GPR official told Express.