Chennai train tragedy: Injured boy lands in one hospital, his crushed limbs in another one

CHENNAI: Five hours after Sreevarshan H was brought to the

General

Hospital on Tuesday, doctors received the call they had been waiting for: The 18-year-old’s legs had been located among the dead at Royapettah Hospital.

On Tuesday, Sreevarshan was returning with a friend, Vijay S, 18, to

Tambaram

after checking his exam results at his school in

Guindy

. "The train was crowded, but we decided to get in anyway," said Vijay.

Four men travelling on the footboard of the suburban train were killed, and five others, including Vijay and Sreevarshan, were injured after they slammed against a concrete fence near the track at St Thomas Mount Railway station on Tuesday. Doctors had to amputate Vijay’s left leg from below the knee after he was brought with a crushed foot. Sreevarshan was rushed in without both his legs. “His legs were severed in the high velocity accident. He was bleeding profusely,” said one of the doctors treating him, wishing anonymity. To stem the bleed, doctors covered the wound temporarily. “If the legs were found in good condition, there was still hope,” said the doctor.

In the meanwhile, doctors at Government Royapettah hospital, where two other injured were being treated, had found a pair of limbs among the dead. “We assumed the legs belonged to someone who was dead as both the injured admitted here had their limbs intact,” said a senior doctor at the hospital. When they discovered that the legs, which were badly crushed in the accident, didn’t match with the dead, they called up other hospitals. At around 1.30, they got in touch with doctors at government general hospital. They had finally found who the limbs belonged to.

The limbs were immediately transported in an ice-pack in an ambulance. “The legs were completely crushed. We identified the limbs based on the pants that Sreevarshan wore and the tattered cloth on the severed limbs,” said the doctor. Vascular and orthopaedic surgeons deemed the limbs unfit as they were crushed. “We could have sutured them to Sreevarshan’s body if they were just cut and not crushed,” said the doctor.

Paramedics of Emergency Management Research Institute – the state’s emergency service provider – said when they arrived at the station at 8.32am, 8 minutes after they received their first call reporting the accident, they found mutilated bodies up to 50 metres away from the accident site, including a severed head and two limbs. “In a situation like that, we don’t think of whose limbs they are. We rush those alive to the nearest hospitals,” said a paramedical staff. In this case, they transported the dead too. While Sreevarshan was taken in one vehicle, his limbs were taken with another.

While Sreevarshan continues to be critical, Vijay regained consciousness late on Tuesday. While he admitted both of them were standing on the footboard, he refuted railway officials’ theory that their bags had got entangled in the wall, pulling all of them out. “There was no space for a bag. The gap was too narrow,” said Vijay, who was moved out of ICU on Wednesday morning. He was in the second compartment after the engine. “I heard someone scream. And then I felt something hit me and people fall on me,” said the teen.

Just outside the ICU, Sreevarshan’s mother Banu waits for her son to come to. “Why isn’t he talking? I am scared,” said Banu, who works as a tailor in a garment factory in Pallavaram. For close to 10 years Banu had single-handedly brought up Sreevarshan and his younger brother after her husband abandoned her 10 years ago. “My children are all I’ve lived for all these years. I will not allow anyone to take him away from me,” she said before breaking down.