It is a sheer miracle that Muneeshwari Nagaraj is still alive.
On Monday night, she was pushed out of a moving suburban train by a thief who snatched her gold chain and tried to grab her handbag. She survived the fall with just a fracture.
The 28-year-old software professional from Arumbakkam was returning home from office by the Tambaram-to-Beach service.
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She had deviated from her routine of taking a bus back home, as the transport workers’ strike hit bus services.
Around 10 p.m., when the train passed the Park Station, she was talking to her husband on her mobile in the hands-free mode, telling him she would get off at the Beach Station from where he could pick her up.
Nagaraj, her husband, recounts: “Even as we were talking, she paused, and I could hear her screaming for help. I kept trying to talk to her but the phone got disconnected, just after I heard a loud noise. I knew something was wrong and immediately rushed to the Park Station.”
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Nagaraj, employed in a shipping company located near the Beach Station, was told by doctors at the orthopaedic ward in the Government Stanley Medical Hospital that Muneeswari was out of danger.
“Fortunately, she fell on a clump of bushes away from the track and oncoming trains and lay there for some time, unable to move. She signalled for help, using the torch app on her mobile phone. Some passengers in an oncoming train spotted her and came to her help,’’ added Nagaraj who, by then, reached the spot, accompanied by railway police personnel.
Investigators said the thief, conversing in Hindi, was suspected to have entered the ladies compartment in which Muneeshwari was travelling, snatched her gold chain as she was talking to her husband and began to yank her handbag. The woman resisted, but in the tussle, was pushed out of the train.