The decomposed body of a 55-year-old woman was recovered from the ground floor of Chennai’s elevated Mylapore MRTS railway station on Monday, four days after she went missing.
A post-mortem examination was conducted at Royapettah Government Hospital on Tuesday. Preliminary police investigations suggest that she may have accidentally fallen through an opening in the floor of an abandoned second-floor room, plunging to the ground floor and sustaining fatal injuries. The Thiruvanmiyur Railway Police registered a case and began investigating the circumstances surrounding her death. Police suspect that Vijaya may have entered the abandoned room on the station platform to relieve herself, possibly mistaking it for a washroom or being compelled by an urgent need. Investigators believe she may then have fallen through an opening in the room’s floor, plunging to the ground floor. The opening, which appears to have allowed the fatal fall, has raised concerns about whether adequate safety measures were in place to prevent such an accident. The report attributed her death to a blood clot near the heart. Her body was subsequently handed over to her husband. the incident has brought the safety of abandoned spaces and openings within elevated public infrastructure into focus While the officer stopped short of calling it a lapse. The investigation is underway.
Four days later, at around 11.50 am on October 12, the station manager alerted the railway police after the woman’s decomposed body was found on the ground floor of the station.
Vijaya had sustained rib and spinal fractures, according to the medical report cited by the police.
A missing-person case was registered, and an investigation was initiated. The woman, identified as Vijaya, a resident of Pallikaranai in Chennai, had gone missing on October 8. Her daughter had lodged a complaint at the Mylapore police station around 10 am that day, stating that her mother had gone to the toilet and had not returned, according to police.
