Sari stuck in Metro door, woman pulled for metres & thrown onto tracks, dies

NEW DELHI: In a freak accident that will alarm Delhi Metro passengers, a 35-year-old woman suffered severe brain and chest injuries last Thursday when a train dragged her for several metres at Inderlok station after her clothes got stuck in the door while she was stepping down. She died at Safdarjung Hospital on Saturday.
The commissioner of Metro railway safety will be conducting an inquiry into the incident, said Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in a statement issued on Saturday.
According to sources, CCTV footage shows that the woman first entered the coach and then turned back to get her child who had been left behind on the platform. Most probably, her sari got stuck in the door – this is a matter of investigation now – and she was dragged onto the platform as the train began to move. As it left the station, the woman tumbled onto the tracks. The incident occurred at 1.04 pm. An ambulance took the woman to Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital, which refused her admission citing lack of a ventilator.

A woman who died of injuries after being thrown onto the metro track at Inderlok Metro station was initially taken to Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital, which refused her admission. According to the woman’s relatives, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and Lok Nayak Hospital, too, refused to admit herreportedly for the same reason. She was finally admitted at Safdarjung.
The doctors who treated her at the hospital said that when she arrived, her condition was critical and shewas unconscious. “She had diffused axonal injury (which occurs due to a blunt injury that causes the brain to rotate and shift rapidly inside the skull) and also a fracture on the right side of the head. Besides, she had blood outside the lungs, which makes breathing difficult and for which chest tube drainage was put on both sides of the chest,” a doctor said. She passed away on Saturday afternoon.

Reena’s husband had passed away in 2014 and since then she has been selling vegetables to feed her family. She is survived by her 10-year-old son, Hiten, and 12-year-old daughter Ria. “Who will take care of her children now? Who will give their school fees?” asked Reena’s sister-in-law, Monika Sonkar, at the hospital.The two children were inconsolable. Ria told TOI that she had last spoken to her mother on Thursday when she was going to school and she had told her that she would return after attending a wedding on Friday.
The deceased’s relatives had earlier refused to claim her body, insisting that DMRC should pay them compensation. They claimed that had the door opened, Reena, would have been alive. They later allowed the authorities to send her body for post-mortem.

Asked why the doors didn’t open, DMRC sources said that will be clear after the inquiry. According to sources, if the doors encounter an obstruction, a safety mechanism is activated. The doors automatically open and attempt to close three times. If the closing process fails after three attempts, the doors remain open and manual intervention is required by the station controller to close them.
Regular announcements are also made inside trains advising passengers that while boarding and alighting, they should handle items like sari, dupatta, dhoti and bag carefully.
Emergency alarm buttons are available inside the coaches for alerting the train operator about any problem. In case of an emergency, passengers can inform the train operator.The information is immediately relayed to the approaching station so that the staff is ready with the required help.