08 December,2016 08:30 AM IST | | Suraj Ojha
Alert commuters and constables at Kurla station chase down the killer, who was caught red-handed with the gold chain he snatched from Sapna Shukla before pushing her in front of a train
During the scuffle, Sapna fell right in front of an approaching train
Mumbai was supposed to be the city of dreams for both of them. The only difference was that Sapna Shukla (24) had worked hard to become a successful corporate executive, while the accused was looking for a shortcut. Tragically, it was Sapna who paid the price, after the reckless teen pushed her under a train while trying to steal her gold chain.
While Sapna had put in years of study before finding success as the deputy manager of a life insurance company in Mumbai, the accused minor had only cleared Std X. But that didn't stop him from running away from his hometown in Odisha with dreams of making it big in Mumbai. Within days, his money ran out, but his pride would not allow him to return home empty-handed.
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Subhashish tried to flee, but commuters and cops caught him
His father had no idea
His father had no idea what the teenager was up to and was shocked to get a call from the police after the tragic incident at Kurla station. "He came to Mumbai to become a big man. On November 30, he sold his Samsung phone and bicycle to buy the ticket to Mumbai and left home without informing us. You can ask anyone in the locality how quiet and innocent he is. I could not believe my ears when the cops called me with the news of his arrest for such a heinous crime," said the father of the accused, who is a statistical enumerator with the road department of the Odisha government.
Bairagi added, "Two of his friends, who had left with him, returned just a day before the incident. My son could not gather the courage to face the family, so he refused to return. He told his friends that he would return only after he earned lots of money."
Golden ticket
24-year-old Sapna, on the other hand, was working in her dream job at HDFC Life Insurance in BKC. Originally from Lucknow, she had completed her MBA from the National Insurance Academy in Pune and had arrived in Mumbai just 1.5 years ago. Around 8 pm on Tuesday, she was waiting at Kurla station for a train to Ghatkopar, where she shares a PG accommodation with two friends. When the accused spotted Sapna at the station, he saw the gold chain around her neck as his golden ticket home.
He grabbed her chain, and in the ensuing scuffle, he ended up pushing Sapna on to the tracks, right in the path of an approaching train.
Eyewitness accounts
The accused tried to flee and nearly got away, but was apprehended by alert onlookers and cops from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) standing nearby. One of the eyewitnesses, Rafiq Shaikh, told this reporter, "I was just getting off the train at Kurla when I saw the boy snatching the chain of the woman who fell under a train. The boy started running, but we shouted to alert others about the incident and he was caught."
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Mohammad Ansari, one of the commuters who helped to catch the accused, said, "He was running very fast towards the foot over bridge, and was moving in a zig-zag pattern. At first we didn't understand what was happening, but when we heard so many people shouting, we decided to catch him."
The accused confessed to the crime and told the police that he snatched the gold chain so he could buy a return ticket home after his dream of getting rich was shattered. Senior police inspector of Kurla GRP, Ashok Bhorde, said, "We have arrested the accused and registered a case against him under Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 393 (attempt to commit robbery) of the IPC. The accused is a resident of Orissa and was in Mumbai in search of a job. When he did not get one, he decided to commit this crime."
