Bihar youth dies of ‘severe cold’ at Ludhiana railway station

A youth from Bihar was found dead on a bench at the Ludhiana railway station platform, possibly due to the severe cold conditions in the region. This is the second mysterious death reported at the station in the past week. The station's redevelopment has led to inadequate retiring facilities, leaving passengers stranded on the platform.

A Bihar youth was found lying dead on a bench at the railway station platform here on Saturday. Railway officials suspect that he died due to the severe cold conditions prevailing in the region.

As North India has been reeling under a prolonged cold wave since late December, most of the trains have seen delays, leading to scores of passengers being stranded at the station. (HT)

The deceased identified as Ajit Kumar had reportedly reached Ludhiana late at night from a train coming from Bihar, according to the government railway police (GRP) officials, who recovered the deceased’s body in the morning.

“Most probably he came here late at night and passed away while asleep on one of the benches at the platform,” said investigating officer ASI Surjit Singh.

Ajit’s body was sent to the civil hospital and a postmortem would be conducted on Sunday.

This is the second case of mysterious death reported from the station in the last week. A few days back an employee of Food Corporation of India travelling back from an official visit to Kolkata had reached dead at the station. He had reportedly died of a cardiac arrest on board the Lohit Express when the train was somewhere around Ambala.

Inadequate retiring facilities

It is pertinent here to mention that the Ludhiana Junction railway station went into re-development over six months ago and all the retiring facilities available here were demolished to make way for the new building. There are only a couple of AC waiting halls and open waiting sheds for passengers. These halls and sheds can cater to around 300 passengers at the station which has a daily average footfall of around 50,000.

As North India has been reeling under a prolonged cold wave since late December, most of the trains have seen long delays, leading to scores of passengers stranded at the station. Especially at night, passengers can be seen lying on the platform, as they wait for the late-running trains.

Senior divisional commercial manager Shubham Kumar, when asked about the retiring facilities available at the station at present said, “We don’t have any retiring rooms at the moment as the re-development work is undergoing. We have only two waiting halls and a couple of sheds for the passengers.”