Lucknow, April 13
A brilliant sports career of national level female athlete has been cut short with the amputation of a leg after being thrown off a moving train near Bareilly early yesterday. The police, however, is trying to make light of the traumatic incident.

Twentythree-year-old Sonu Sinha, a national level volleyball player, representing Uttar Pradesh was on her way to Noida on Sunday night by the Delhi-bound Padmawat Express to take a recruitment examination of the CISF when the incident occurred at Chenati railway station just before Bareilly.

A shocked Sonu gained consciousness in the Bareilly district hospital today to discover that the doctors had amputated a leg and the other one had multiple fractures. The Bareilly GRP has registered a case against four unidentified people.

Speaking to a local channel from her hospital bed, Sonu with her bandaged head disclosed that she had boarded the Delhi-bound Padmavat Express from Ambedkar Nagar for appearing in a Central Industrial Security Force examination in Noida.

“I was sitting near the entrance in the general compartment. Some men had been fighting off and on.

Around 4 am one of them tried to snatch my gold chain and when I resisted they pushed me off the train. One of my legs was stuck on the adjoining track on which a train was coming. It kept on honking but I did not have the power to move away. When I gained consciousness I was here”, narrated Sonu.

However, two senior police officers tried to deflect the blame from their respective departments by giving conflicting versions. Special DG (Law and Order) Brij Lal said that “It appears that she lost balance and fell off the train during a tussle inside the train when some people tried to snatch her gold chain”.

Similarly, ADG GRP A K Jain said “While fighting someone perhaps reached her throat causing the fall which could be either accidental or deliberate. Still her gold chain is very much with her and her other belongings is also safe”.

He denied a robbery attempt in the train adding that there were no police personnel on board as due to shortage of force it was not possible to provide security in the 764 trains passing through Uttar Pradesh.

Strangely, there was no local police anywhere near the railway track where she fell and local villagers took her to the district hospital where doctors arranged for blood and amputated her leg in order to save her lift.