In yet another incident of mobile snatching on trains, a tourist in Tamil Nadu nearly lost his cellphone while filming a beautiful curve on the route to Chennai. The tourist on the Shivamogga-Chennai Express on November 23 was filming the train at a curve shortly after it departed from the SMVT Bengaluru terminal.
A snatcher who was waiting in the shadows by the railway tracks suddenly lunged and attempted to snatch the device. Fortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful, as the tourist managed to pull back his arm in time and the mobile phone remained with its rightful owner. However, the tourist managed to capture the image of the thief, which could help the police identify the culprit.
There have been numerous instances of passengers losing their mobile phones while trying to film scenic routes and curved tracks from trains. Many instances, some even recorded on video, involved people trying to pull off stunts by leaning outside trains and trying to slap pillars and posts on the route. Some of them either crashed onto oncoming pillars or lost their grips on the handles.
In another incident on November 24, a CCTV camera at the Kanpur Railway Station caught a tense moment when a woman leaning out of the door suddenly jumped as her children were left behind. The 11-second video of the incident showed two GRP cops saving the woman as soon as she jumped off the train. The GRP personnel caught her within seconds of her falling.
Authorities have advised on several occasions against leaning out of trains to prevent such mishaps.
In 2016, the Punjab and Haryana court ruled that one cannot claim any compensation if any injury or death was caused by the passenger leaning out of the train. The court termed such injuries as "self-inflicted" and refused to hold the Railways responsible for such incidents.