Rajen Hazra

Calcutta, Feb. 9: Rajen Hazra lay groaning on the railway tracks, asking for water and pleading to be taken to hospital. But his cries fell on deaf ears.

A group of demonstrators were busy demanding the removal of the signal post that had hit Rajen as he hung precariously out of an overcrowded local train yesterday morning, and couldn’t be bothered to save the 49-year-old.

“Despite all his pleadings, no one responded,” Rajen’s mother Minati said. “For 45 minutes, my son lay on the tracks but the heartless demonstrators were too busy protesting rather than save the life of my son.”

Witnesses at the Kamrabad level crossing had recounted what had happened to Rajen’s family.

The Asian Paints employee had boarded the train from Sonarpur to drop daughter Sanchita, a Class VIII student, at Loreto Sealdah around 8.30am. The train was crowded but he somehow shoved Sanchita inside a compartment while he hung on to a handrail.

The signal post hit him when the train reached Kamrabad, hardly 500 metres away.

His co-passengers crowded around him on the tracks and began their protest. They wouldn’t let police go near the bleeding Rajen as he made a desperate phone call for help to his family and another one to his daughter’s school.

Minati said Rajen’s son Sanjay had received the call and immediately rushed to the station. Sometime later, a neighbour told the rest of the family about the accident. Minati panicked and began running towards the station, too.

“They had laid out his body on the platform and covered it with a cloth, which was soaked in blood. I could barely look at his face to identify him,” she said.

The superintendent of railway police (Sealdah), Barun Mullick, said the preliminary post-mortem report suggested the signal post had hit Rajen’s head and he had injured his chest after the fall.

The officer said he had spoken to the railway authorities about removing the post. “Local people said this signal post had caused a number of accidents, including some fatal ones.”

The three demonstrators arrested yesterday have been identified as Tanmoy Chakraborty, Saptarshi Ganguly and Paltan Mondal. More arrests are likely soon, the Government Railway Police said.