Volleyball player pushed off train, loses left leg-TOI-14.4.11

Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui | TNN

Lucknow: Hoodlums in Uttar Pradesh crippled the career of a national-level sportswoman when they pushed her off a moving train in Bareilly after she resisted an attempt to snatch her gold chain.
    Hit by another train passing the adjacent tracks, 23-yearold Sonu Sinha, a member of the UP volleyball squad, had to have her left leg amputated below the knee on Tuesday.
    With multiple fractures in her right leg which is now in a cast, Sonu is battling for her life in the post-operation section of the emergency ward at the Bareilly district hospital as a living testimony to the horrible law and order situation in the state. More shocking than Tuesday’s crime is perhaps the fact that district police or government railway police (GRP) did not know about the incident until Wednesday morning, when it was reported by the local media. Attack on athlete: Cops on the hunt for 4 suspects
Lucknow: Volleyball player Sonu Sinha, who was allegedly thrown out of train near Bareilly and lost a leg, is now being treated in a district hospital. But cops appear to have been completely in the dark about the incident till local media reported. “We never got any complaint in this regard till I came to know about the incident in the morning and ordered the Bareilly GRP to record the statements of Sonu Sinha and register a case,” said additional director general, GRP, AK Jain. “We are now on the lookout for the four persons she has identified as accused. She was unable to, and understandably so, identify them distinctly, but we have a description and trying to trace them,” he said.
    A native of Ambedkar Nagar, Sonu, who is also known as Arunima, told reporters on Wednesday she had boarded the general compartment of Padmavat Express from Lucknow on Monday night. “I was standing at the entrance of the coach because of the cool breeze. Things were normal for the next couple of hours before a group of youths entered into a heated argument inside the coach which continued for almost half-an-hour. It was little before the train reached Behanti railway halt, 15km from Bareilly, that I suddenly realised that one of them was trying to snatch my gold chain,” she said.
    “I grabbed his hand and tried to resist. He, however, pushed me hard and I was thrown out of the coach. I landed on the adjacent tracks and before could gather myself, a train passed over me,” Sonu said.
    “The last thing I remember is the engine approaching as the train’s headlamp left me almost blinded. It was a blackout before I woke up to find myself in hospital,” said Sonu.
    “Her left leg was barely dangling from the knee joint by a shred of skin. Her right leg too had compound and multiple fractures apart from bruises all over,” said A B Patni, chief medical superintendent of the Bareilly district hospital.
    “The heavy blood loss compounded by trauma and shock has landed her in a highly critical state,” he said, adding, however, the head injuries she had suffered were mostly superficial.