Mumbai: In a shocking incident, a mentally unstable man threw himself in front of an oncoming train at CST on Wednesday morning but escaped unscathed despite three coaches running over him.
His rescue was caught on video by a bystander, a copy of which is with The Asian Age.
As a result of the incident, services were severely affected during morning peak hours and trains were held up from 8.32 am to 9 am at the Masjid end on platform no. 3.
A railway employee — one of the men who pulled out the man — told this newspaper that at first the man seemed to be traumatised and threw stones at them as well as the Railway Police Force (RPF) personnel as they tried to rescue him. “I was on duty at CST when suddenly people started yelling. We then ran towards the end of the platform and a motorman informed us that a man had randomly jumped in front of the train, looking bewildered. The motorman hit the brakes but the man had already been run over. When the motorman got down, he saw that man did not look as if he had been hurt and called for help,” said the worker.
The unidentified man kept resisting rescue efforts by the railway personnel. “At first, when few of us went down to pull him out he began to fight with us and was trying to get himself out of our grip. Finally, we got an officer from the railway police who wore a helmet and a jacket and tried to pull him out, but when he began to do so, the man threw stones at him as well,” he further added.
The railway workers finally asked nearby homeless people, who were around during the incident, and they recognised him. “The police asked these men to help get him out from under the train, and — in spite of him pelting stones at them —they succeeded,” said the worker.
Deputy station superintendent Sanjay Pandey, who was on duty at the time of the incident, confirmed it.
Eye-witness accounts said that the man had dropped below on to the track in the nick of time. “He was extremely thin and the gap between him and the undercarriage of the train was probably in millimetres. He has only a few external injuries at the ridge of his nose and forehead," said another worker.
The video shows a railway officer trying to get the man out but is unsuccessful. Then a group of men pull him out legs first towards the platform. In the footage, the man looks scared and bewildered while being pulled out kicking and screaming at these rescuers. He finally covers his face with his hands before the video abruptly ends.
