State government glare on toy train death 'We will talk to railway officials to know what exactly happened to the passenger,' says Atri Bhattacharya

TT, 17 October 2019,  Siliguri: The Bengal government will speak to the railway authorities to know what exactly led to last week’s death of Pradip Saxena, a tourist from Rishra in Hooghly, during a toy train ride near Darjeeling.

Saxena’s family has said he fell off the train and died after getting entangled in a hanging cable and rejected claims about a fatal selfie attempt.

“We will talk to railway officials to know what exactly happened to the passenger who died after falling from the toy train,” Atri Bhattacharya, principal secretary in the tourism department, said in Siliguri on Wednesday.

The state is looking into the problem of encroachments on both sides of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) tracks, an issue that has been flagged by Unesco time and again, the department officials said. DHR is a Unesco-designated World Heritage network.

Saxena was on a trip to the hills with his wife and daughter. His family has alleged that he was shooting a video while standing at the door of his coach when he suddenly got entangled in the cable and fell.

On Tuesday, the purported video went viral.