In a tragic incident in Chennai, an 18-year-old college student aboard the local EMU train died after hitting an electric pole near St Thomas Mount station. He was travelling from Tambaram to Chennai Beach station when the incident took place.
According to one report in the Times of India, Jayachandran was a college student, studying computer science in Chennai's Guindy area. Owing to a heavily crowded train, Jayachandran, who was on the edge of the train, hit an electric pole and fell down. The train was reportedly making a bend near the St Thomas Mount station when the teen suffered a fall. Fellow passengers reportedly brought the train to a halt. Police, who rushed him to hospital, were told that Jayachandran was declared dead on arrival at the Chromepet government hospital.
The St Thomas Mount station lies along the Chennai Beach–Chengalpattu section of the Chennai Suburban Railway Network near Guindy. Being located along important businesses and industries, it is used by thousands of commuters daily.
In July last year, five persons travelling on a crowded suburban train at the St Thomas Mount station died after hitting the fencing at the station. The overcrowded network was shut down in July 2018 between 9.50 am and 4 pm to facilitate engineering work on the line. Passengers have long-demanded another train between Chennai Beach and Chengalpattu.
The train, usually set to arrive at Platform 2, arrived on Platform 4, failing to anticipate how close it would be to the fencing. While authorities claimed that they had made announcements, those on the jam-packed train claimed that they were not informed.
In another incident, a 45-year-old woman Deivanai Govindan was run over by an MRTS train in May as she was attempting to cross tracks at the Perungudi MRTS station