Watch: Man jumps under moving train to rescue woman who fell on tracks in India

A video showing a man risking his life to save a woman trapped under a moving goods train in Bhopal has gone viral.

Mohammed Mehboob, 37, was returning home after doing namaaz in the capital of Madhya Pradesh. Since the train was waiting on the tracks, he and his friends crossed it. A woman also followed shortly, but the train began to move.

“She panicked and people tried to tell her to lie down between the tracks but she was not understanding,” Mehboob told the media. “I decided to save her and entered the track by crawling down. I held her hand and asked to lie down silently. As many as 26 bogies passed over us. After the train passed, we stood up and the girl left without saying anything.”

Mehboob said he did not know who the woman was. “My friends shot the video,” he said. The incident happened on February 5, but went viral on social media over the past few days. Mehboob, a carpenter, has been felicitated by many organisations in Bhopal.

Asked why he risked his life, Mehboob, who is married and has a small daughter, said he had been shocked last month after a friend’s mother was run over by a train at the same spot.

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“When I saw the girl in danger, I reacted instinctively,” he said. “I could not stand by and let her die.”

An NGO in the neighbourhood went to felicitate him, but were surprised when Mehboob said he did not want the publicity. “We had to persuade him to come to the event,” said Shoaib Hashmi of the NGO. And since Mehboob did not even have a mobile phone, they gifted him one.

• India