Title - Ticket checker beaten up as youth falls to death

An unidentified man, aged about 32 years, fell off a moving express train near Mallarpur in Birbhum, sparking off violence at the station. A section of passengers, who the railways claim was part of a group travelling without tickets, accused ticket checker Manoj Kumar of having pushed out the man from the train and thrashed him. No FIR or complaint was lodged against him though.
    The incident occurred around 7.30am on the 13134 Dn Varanasi-Sealdah Express. Kumar was apparently checking tickets in a reserved compartment when he came across group of travellers who failed to pro duce valid tickets. According to other passengers, the ticket checker was having an altercation with the group near the door when they heard a loud noise. Those haggling with the ticket checker claimed that one of the group members had been pushed out of the train by the man in the black coat.
    The man, who couldn’t be identi fied till the evening, was rescued from beside the tracks by locals and taken to a local hospital where he was de clared brought dead. Some people who thrashed the ticket checker claimed that he had demanded Rs 100 from the traveller as bribe. Eastern Railway officials, however, refuted this charge.
    Though the train has no scheduled stop at Mallarpur, the driver applied brakes on realizing that somebody had fallen off near the outer signal By then, some ticketless travellers had started heckling Kumar. He got off the train and tried to escape but was caught and thrashed. Pradip Ku mar, assistant station master of Mal larpur, said he heard a noise and stepped out of his office to find the ticket checker being manhandled by mob. Kumar may have been lynched had he not been saved by other passen gers. He was shifted to the Rampurhat Hospital from where he was referred to Kolkata. Eastern Railway officials said that he was later moved to the or thopaedic hospital in Howrah.
    Kumar lives in a railway quarter at Rampurhat and he was accompa nied to Howrah by his wife Vinita. She said her husband suffers from a kid ney-related disorder and his condi tion got aggravated after the assault.
    “The ticket checker was assaulted by goons travelling without valid tickets on the Varanasi-Sealdah Ex press. The man, who died, seems to have tried to get off the moving train and lost balance. The ticket checker was not involved. Nobody made any attempt to lodge an FIR file a complaint with us. The ticket checker’s life was saved by other pas sengers. This wouldn’t have hap pened had he been involved,” an spokesperson said.


Manoj Kumar could have been lynched had other passengers not rescued him