Burdwan, Feb. 20: A 60-year-old mother and her only son were crushed under a train this morning as she tried to prevent him from committing suicide.

Nanda Singh, 35, started running towards the tracks after mother Parvati refused to give him Rs 30, with which he would have bought liquor.

“Nanda’s cloth material business was not running well because of a hawker eviction drive taken up by the Burdwan municipal authorities last week. He had been drinking heavily,” said a police officer.

Around 7am, Nanda, a resident of Rainagar in Burdwan town, asked for the money. When she refused, he told her he was going to commit suicide. His mother ran after him.

The tracks are about a kilometre from their house.

“Nanda rushed onto the tracks when a Howrah-bound local was approaching the Kalna Gate level crossing. His mother followed him, panting and pleading with him to stop. As the train came closer, the widow jumped on him in a last-ditch bid to drag him away,” said Niranjan Naskar, the Government Railway Police officer-in-charge in Burdwan, about 100km from Calcutta.

Nanda’s widow Latika did not tell her son Tapu about the deaths. He is appearing in his secondary examination. “What will happen tomorrow?” she wondered. Her daughter Beauty is in Class XI.

Tapu, who knows that his father and grandma have met with an accident, wrote his physical science paper today. He has a history test tomorrow.

“Dad used to be very depressed. The eviction drive hit his business hard,” said Beauty.