'He was calm, avoided fights', say friends of Chennai college student who died in 'route thala' clash

CHENNAI: On a Friday afternoon after 2 pm, the day before the weekend when the city was in a rush and the busiest railway station in Chennai was welcoming and leaving the passengers, in the entrance of the Chennai suburban terminal and near ATM, a crowd gathered in a circle which drew the attention of passengers.

The people who were walking towards the platform curiously found a youngster lying on the floor unconscious. His ears were bleeding and no other symptom of external injury was found.

Few police personnel with both Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) tags were shouting at the crowd to move away from the youngster. Soon, a buggy from the emergency centre arrived at the scene and the personnel shifted him to the emergency centre located near the main entrance in the station.

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A senior citizen who witnessed the event said, “Why are youngsters doing this to themselves? They seemed to be college students who had a clash in the station and this guy was punched in the face and stamped in the station.” Others in the station, some of them still in shock over what they witnessed, spoke to each other about the incident.

At the emergency centre after he was brought for first aid, a few anxious college students rushed in, worried about their friend Sundar who was assaulted. They said Sundar was a student at the Presidency College. “He was always calm and stayed away from fights or any form of violence both at college and in his hometown,” one of them said.

After providing him with first aid for around 10 minutes he was shifted in the ambulance to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, located opposite to the Central station. An official from the GRP present at the station acknowledged: “It has been a long-time burning issue where students from both these colleges engage in fights.”

Sundar, who was undergoing treatment, finally succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday morning, leaving behind two sisters and parents, both daily wage labourers, who had sent their child to college with an expectation of a better life.