2017, June 23: A Strange Suicide

It happened on June 23, 2017, but was first reported on July 4; at 10:20AM, an unknown woman at the Ghatkopar railroad station in Mumbai, India, was seen by horrified witnesses and closed circuit cameras to purposely jump in front of an oncoming train at Platform No. 1 and vanish underneath it.

        The train had been slowing to a stop, and the motorman slammed on the brakes, but at least one car still rolled over the woman. No one could rescue her or even see where she went, so nothing could be done but roll the train out of the station and hope... but there was no woman on the track under the train, and no evidence of a horrific accident spread across the tracks. There was simply nothing.

Four frames from two different cameras [Larger version here]

The report on July 4, as well as those that followed in other online news services included links to the camera footage showing the woman clearly choosing to jump down in front of the train, followed by the passengers of the train jumping out and running forward to investigate.

        The story was picked up from the earliest local reporting in the Indian Mid-Day.com website on July 4, and re-presented in the British Mirror website on July 5, an English language 'news' site of questionable merit. They presented much the same facts as above, but also asserted twice that witnesses thought the woman must have been a ghost.

        Ashok Bhorade, senior police inspector with the Government Railway Police, stated that no one reported the incident to his department, which is hardly a surprise; with no body or evidence of an accident, the driver of the train would likely not be in a hurry to report something that would only get them in trouble. It was speculated by the Railway Protection Force that the woman may have come out from under the train and walked to Platform No. 2, then leaving the station... though the footage clearly looks as if she purposely chose to jump in front of the train.

As the Story Spreads...

        It's likely the Mirror's version of the story, presenting the matter as either a ghost or a mysterious disappearance, will be picked up and spread by other news services, eventually to end up in all manner of paranormal speculative magazines, websites, and forums. Meanwhile, another article on the matter published in the Times of India on July 5, a day after the Mid-Day.com article's release, is likely to be spread by people skeptical of the ghost or disappearance explanations.

        This article, after stating that the footage does indeed show the woman jumping into the middle of the tracks and going under the train, then states:

"It appears that the woman got up, climbed on to another platform then went on to the footover bridge. CCTVs on the bridge captured her walking normally without injuries at 10.22am. She got off the bridge on platform 1 and exited the station from the same spot where she had entered.

The motorman did not inform Central Railways nor the Government Railway Police (GRP)."

While it sounds unlikely, it would not be the first time a person who was in the middle of the tracks and low enough to avoid a direct hit from the train would have escaped such a situation unharmed... and in fact, just that had happened two months earlier to a young woman who had not been paying attention at the tracks, lending more plausibility to the explanation. Unfortunately, the Times of India article did not post any footage or stills that would prove their claim that the woman was filmed on the bridge after the incident.

        That evidence appeared on the internet on the following day, June 6, in an article in the NDTV website, which posted a video that both showed the woman before and after going under the train; she can be seen walking out of the station in the crowd about twenty minutes after she initially went under the train, apparently uninjured. We'll probably never know her reasons for jumping in the first place.