Indian-origin woman, friend killed by subway train in New York

A late-night outing turned fatal at a New York subway station after an Indian-origin woman and her Nepali-American friend were struck and killed by an oncoming train, with a disturbing video of the moments before the tragedy emerging online.

The victims, both 24, were identified as Malaika Chitre, a resident of Dayton, New Jersey, and Navam Kaul of Sayreville, New Jersey, according to US media reports.

The two, who had attended Rutgers University together, were killed at the Spring Street subway station in Lower Manhattan early Sunday. Police were alerted at around 3:14 a.m. after a downtown No. 4 train was unable to stop in time.

A video circulating online appears to show Chitre laughing and pulling Kaul towards her shortly before the approaching train strikes them. The circumstances leading up to the incident, however, remain unclear.

According to the New York Daily News, it has not been established who entered the tracks first. The newspaper reported that both died at the scene and their bodies were later recovered from beneath the third and fourth cars of the train.

The New York Post, citing law enforcement sources, reported that Kaul may have fallen onto the tracks or entered them inside the station, prompting Chitre to go down in an apparent attempt to help him.

The train was carrying around 100 passengers at the time. Following the incident, passengers were evacuated onto the platform, according to reports.

Two young lives cut short

Chitre and Kaul had studied at Rutgers University, where they were part of the same student community.

The New York Daily News reported that Kaul attended Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick from fall 2020 through spring 2024, although he did not receive a degree.

Chitre completed her Bachelor of Science degree in May 2024 from the Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences.

Their professional lives had also taken shape in the years since college. Chitre worked as an operations specialist at Acadia Pharmaceuticals, while Kaul was employed as a financial data analyst at Bloomberg, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Their deaths have left former classmates and the Rutgers community mourning the loss of two young people whose lives were still unfolding.

"We are saddened to learn of the tragic death of these two former students," Dory Devlin, assistant vice president of news and media relations at Rutgers, was quoted as saying.

The incident remains under investigation as authorities work to establish exactly how the two ended up on the tracks and what happened in the moments before the train arrived.