Indian railway worker jumps before looming train, rescues child fallen onto tracks
CCTV footage of Mayur Shelke's rescue have gone viral on social media, with many lauding the selfless 30-year-old
An Indian railway worker has been hailed a superhero after he sprinted more than 30m along a track to grab a boy from the path of an express train.
CCTV footage of Mayur Shelke's rescue have gone viral on social media, with many lauding the selfless 30-year-old, reports the Strait Times.
The six-year-old boy was with his partially sighted mother on Saturday at Vangani station, about 70km east of India's commercial capital Mumbai - when he fell off the platform edge onto the track.
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Shelke was alerted by cries for help from the mother and immediately started running along the track He is seen in images released by the Indian Central Railways grabbing the boy, throwing him back onto the platform and then climbing up himself barely two seconds before the Udyan Express thundered through.
"I saw the kid falling and the train speeding towards him. There was no chance he would have lived had I not intervened," Shelke was quoted as saying by the Mid-Day newspaper.
"There was no time to think at all. I was determined to save him," he said, adding he had been scared of the looming train.
Netizens hailed Shelke, whose job as a pointsman is to check the train signals, a superhero. India's Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said Shelke will be rewarded for "motivating humanity with his work".
