CHENNAI: Last Friday, just a few hours after Infosys employee S Swathi was hacked to death on Platform 2 of the Nungambakkam railway station in Chennai, a 72-year-old man died on the same platform.
People said Adikesavan, a regular commuter, fell unconscious after seeing the young girl's horrifically wounded body. His son alleged that his septugenarian father was not administered first aid either by the railway authorities or police, or members of the public.
This was the same pattern of bystander behavior reported after the Infosys employee has hacked to death by an as-yet untraced man in full view of the public last week.
Adikesavan, a resident of Sourashtra Nagar in Choolaimedu, used to take the 8.30 am train from Nungambakkam to Central Station. He had been working in a utensil manufacturing unit on Wall Tax Road for 40 years, , his son Kothandaraman said.
Around 9.20 am that day, around the same time that Swathi’s body was being secured, , Kothandaraman received a call from his sister that their father was lying unconscious on the Nungambakkam platform. “When I rushed to the station, there was a lot of activity. I thought my father had been hit by a train,” Kothandaraman said.
Later, the family learnt that the elderly man had swooned while attempting to sit on a bench and broke a tooth. He lay unconscious with blood oozing from his mouth. “What was appalling was that many people and policemen were there at that time but no one came to the aid of my father. A while later, he was carried up the stairs andtaken to a private hospital where he was declared brought dead,” Kothandaraman said.
He said there was no ready first-aid facilities at the Nungambakkam railway station.
It was not clear whether it was the gruesome scene of Swathi’s body lying in a pool of blood on the platform that affected Adikesavan. ”It is possible. He was a very old man,” said his son.