Mica girl jumps out of train, stops thief in tracks

Two gutsy Mica girls have disrupted a classic modus operandi of train thieves, blunting the villains' confidence and ensuring a degree of safety for scores of passengers travelling in and out of Gujarat.

The thief who grabbed the purse of Nitasha Nair - who was travelling, on Monday, on the Suryanagari express with a fellow Mican, Ritu Banerji - deployed the usual escape plan: jump out of the running train. But as it happened, the unusually brave Nair leaped onto the tracks and chased the man.

And Banerji pulled the emergency-stop chain, giving other passengers time to nab the thief.

The part-time crime-fighters are students of the post-graduate programme in communication management.

They were returning to Ahmedabad from Mumbai when the Johdpur-bound train halted as scheduled at Vadodara.

During the five-minute stopover, the girls were chatting with each other on their side-lower berths.

Sometime during the period, Nair saw a man dressed in casuals approaching them. "I mistook him to be another passenger," she said.

The man thought he would cash in on the mistake and grabbed Nair's purse, which was lying beside her, and dashed towards the door.

Even as Nair screamed at him, he jumped out of the train. Although the train had begun pulling out of the station, Nair got down and ran after him on the railway tracks.

In seconds, Banerji pulled the chain. Stunned by the uncharacteristic response, the thief darted up the train again and tried to hide inside a lavatory.

"By then, people had become aware of the situation," Nair said. "I soon saw a large crowd, and some policemen. They were dragging the man out of the lavatory."

Later, the girls lodged a police complaint at the Ahmedabad railway station.

The railway police at the Vadodara station have recovered Nair's purse; the thief had discreetly dropped it on the tracks when he realised that he was being chased.