South Sudan student’s kin bury her in Mumbai, ask for footage of railway accident

 

MUMBAI: South Sudanese student Jowahir Abdallah (24), who had lost both her legs after falling off a running train^[1] on July 12, succumbed to multiple organ failure at Sion Hospital on Wednesday.

 

Close friends said the railways should increase the halting time of long-distance trains so that passengers can get in and off without risking their lives. Her family decided to bury^[2] her at the Chandanwadi crematorium the same evening and not fly back home with the body.

Abdallah and five of her friends had taken Koyna Express from Miraj to travel till Dadar. They were thereafter supposed to head to the airport to fly back home. This would have been the first time in four years that Abdallah would have seen her family back in South Sudan^[3].

“Abdallah suffered severe bladder injuries and a pelvic fracture, besides amputation of both legs. She died around 1.10am of septicaemia following polytrauma from the amputation,” said Dr Rajesh Dere who conducted the post-mortem. Sion Hospital waived off her hospitalisation bills.

Abdallah was the youngest of six siblings. A bright student, she had earned a government-sponsored scholarship to a technology institute in Sangli. “Jowahir was particularly close to our mother. We hadn’t informed our mother of Jowahir’s condition after the incident but were forced to give her news of the demise,” said Dr Haram Mustafa, Abdallah’s sister who has flown in from South Sudan.

Mustafa, a gynaecologist, is six months’ pregnant. Abdallah’s three brothers live in different parts of Africa. Another sibling, Zenab, is pursuing her masters in pediatrics in a college in Ethiopia. The death comes as another blow to the siblings who lost their father on Sunday. Mustafa said she was not aware of how the accident^[4] occurred but intends to find out. “We want to have a look at the CCTV footage^[5] and get to the bottom of the case. If we find anything suspicious, we will certainly not stay quiet,” she told TOI. Mustafa and their family friends arrived on July 15 and had been alternating between sleeping in the hospital and in a Sion hotel. Sarah James, a childhood friend of Abdallah who graduated from a Noida college, said the two had spoken on Sunday for a bit. “We discussed what we would do after she recovered. She even smiled at me and I took a picture of it so I could send it to her mother. I did not tell her about her father’s death,” James told TOI. The Dadar GRP will register an accidental death case. “Koyna Express has a halting period of three minutes which is sufficient to alight. Passengers should avoid getting down from a running train,” said a Central Railway official. (Inputs by Nitasha Natu, Manthan Mehta & Sumitra Deb Roy)

References

1. ^{^} train (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
2. ^{^} bury (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
3. ^{^} South Sudan (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
4. ^{^} accident (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
5. ^{^} footage (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)