62-Year-Old Amputee Pushed to Death from Mumbai Local Train Near Bandra
A 62-year-old disabled man was pushed to his death from a moving local train between Mahim and Bandra stations on Thursday afternoon following a dispute over seating in a reserved compartment.
The deceased, identified as Cajetan Denis Pires, was an amputee and a resident of Santacruz East. Pires was travelling in the Divyangjan coach, which is reserved for commuters with disabilities, aboard a Churchgate-Borivali train when the fatal confrontation took place at 1:24 pm.
According to Shahaji Nikam, senior police inspector at Bandra Government Railway Police (GRP), Pires was commuting from Mahim to Santacruz when he noticed Amajad Safruddin Shaikh, 48, an able-bodied man, seated in the reserved coach. When Pires asked him to vacate the seat, an argument broke out between the two men. Following the heated altercation, Shaikh allegedly pushed Pires out of the moving train.
Fellow passengers in the coach immediately restrained Shaikh and escorted him to security personnel when the train halted at Bandra station. Bandra GRP officers arrested Shaikh directly from the platform.
Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel discovered Pires lying seriously injured on the tracks. They rushed him to Bhabha Hospital in Bandra West, where he died during treatment.
Kishore Shinde, assistant commissioner of GRP, stated that Shaikh has been charged with murder under Section 103(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Shaikh, a pavement dweller near Churchgate, told RPF officials that he believed a crow had flown into the compartment and that he accidentally pushed Pires while attempting to chase it away.
This marks the third fatal commuter clash on Mumbai's suburban rail network this year. In June, 22-year-old Mayank Lohar was stabbed to death between Goregaon and Kandivali stations following a dispute over whether to close train doors during rain. In January, 32-year-old college teacher Alok Singh was fatally stabbed by a co-passenger after an argument over right of way in a compartment.
Railway activist Samir Zaveri, who is also a differently abled commuter, urged railway officials to treat the incident as a wake-up call, take strict action against violators, and implement steps to safeguard passengers.
