A 13-year-old boy died in Odisha’s Boudh district after he was apparently dragged under a moving passenger train while attempting to film another social-media video near Talupalli village, police said. The incident occurred around 8.05 pm on Friday under the jurisdiction of Baunsuni police station, months after the boy had been counselled by railway and local police for a similar stunt.
Investigators suspect that part of the Balangir-Purunakatak passenger train became caught on the boy’s body as the train passed over the railway track. The train was travelling towards Boudh station when the incident occurred, according to the report. Police said the boy was wearing grey pants and a blue T-shirt.
The circumstances leading to his presence on the track were not immediately established. “We are yet to ascertain how he ended up on the railway track,” Mahendra Behera, inspector-in-charge of Baunsuni police station, said. The boy’s body was handed over to his parents on Saturday after a postmortem, Behera said.
According to police, the boy had previously appeared in a viral video that showed him lying between railway tracks while a train passed overhead. Another minor was allegedly filming that stunt. The video surfaced in June last year, after which the Railway Protection Force, Government Railway Police and local police counselled the two minors, police said.
The RPF registered a case against the two minors on July 6 last year. The boy’s parents were also warned about the potentially fatal consequences of repeating such acts, according to the police account. The earlier incident had already brought the risks associated with railway tracks to the attention of local authorities and the family.
Railway authorities subsequently conducted an awareness campaign in the area, cautioning young people against risking their lives for online popularity. The latest death has again highlighted the difficulty of preventing access to railway infrastructure when safety messaging does not stop young people from attempting dangerous stunts for social-media content.
Police said the boy had returned home from a tuition class on Friday, taken money from his father and gone to a shop. His parents later could not find him. The sequence of events between his leaving home and reaching the track remained under investigation.
The case also involves the responsibilities of multiple agencies around railway safety: the railway authorities responsible for infrastructure and awareness campaigns, the RPF and GRP responsible for railway-related enforcement, and local police and families involved in responding to risks involving minors. Police have not yet stated what further action or investigation steps will follow beyond establishing how the boy reached the track.
