Four travelling on train footboards fall to death in Chennai

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Four commuters were killed and seven injured on Tuesday when they fell off a moving suburban train after brushing against a concrete wall very close to the tracks, a Southern Railway official said. The official said two persons had died at the same spot on Monday as well.

Tuesday's accident occurred at the St Thomas Mount station while the victims were travelling standing or sitting on the footboards of the bogeys of the train going from Chennai Beach to Thirumalpur.

According to the railway official, the dangling backpacks of these commuters had hit/brushed against the concrete wall, throwing them off balance and leading to their falling from the moving train.

Those injured were admitted to the Government Royapettah Hospital and Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital. The lower limbs of one of the injured were severed and he is undergoing treatment, the official said.

The three dead were identified as Shivakumar, Bharat and Naveen Kumar while the fourth deceased remained unidentified. The injured included Vignesh, Naresh, Vijay Kumar, Srivatsan and Yashar.

According to railway officials, an unidentified injured man admitted to the hospital left on his own.

"Naresh suffered injuries on his forehead while Vignesh has leg injuries," a doctor at the Royapettah Hospital told IANS.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami expressing grief over the deaths and announced Rs 100,000 each to the families of the deceased and Rs 50,000 to the seriously injured.

Senior railway officials rushed to the spot even as other officials visited hospitals to render assistance to the injured.

Regular commuters said that ongoing cable repair work on the stretch had led to overcrowding on suburban trains due to reduced frequency and routing of these trains on to the tracks meant for express trains.

This led to the accident, they maintained and demanded that the wall be demolished to prevent frequent accidents on the spot. They also sought more trains during peak hours.

General Railway Police's Additional Director General C. Sylendra Babu said the wall would be demolished at the earliest and appealed to commuters not to travel on train footboards.

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