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Earphones on, boy hit by train
The driver of the Garib Rath Express blew the train horn, people standing close to the track shouted, but all in vain. When the train dragged the 16-yr-old Delhi school student for several feet before stopping, his earphones were still on. Peeyush Khandelwal reports. Penalising ‘distracted’ road users on table
Sixteen-year-old Delhi school student Kaushlendra Pal never heard the train coming. He was using his earphones to listen to music from his mobile while crossing a railway track in Ghaziabad when a speeding train hit him from behind on Saturday afternoon.
The driver of the Garib Rath Express blew the train horn, people standing close to the track shouted, but all in vain.
When the train dragged him for several feet before stopping, his earphones were still on.
The teen was rushed to a private hospital with severe head injuries and a severed leg. He was later moved to Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital but didn’t survive.
“People were shouting, warning him about the oncoming train. By the time he noticed the train, it was too late,” said Pancham Kumar, Pal’s family friend.
“He insisted on buying a phone that had a good radio. So, I bought him one two months ago. He seldom took the phone along with him to school,” said his father Sankata Prasad.
A Government Railway Police (GRP) official at Sahibabad said the train driver repeatedly sounded the horn to warn the boy. In December last year, two schoolboys were mowed down by a train in Ghaziabad.
Like Pal, they also had their earphones on and couldn’t hear the approaching train. A similar case was reported from Narela in Outer Delhi last April.
