Tragedy hit superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s promotional campaign ‘Raees by Rail’ for his upcoming movie late on Monday night when a man died of cardiac arrest during a massive rush to have a glimpse of the actor at Vadodara Railway Station in Gujarat. Two Railway Protection Force officials too were injured. The Gujarat Railway Police ordered an enquiry into the chaos and subsequent death of the man.
The victim, identified as Farid Khan Pathan, 45, a politician from Vadodara, died of a heart attack caused by suffocation after an estimated 15,000-strong crowd went berserk in rush to have a look at the 51-year-old superstar when the Mumbai-Delhi August Kranti Rajdhani Express train made its scheduled halt at Vadodara at 10.30 pm.
Khan had boarded the train along with film’s director Rahul Dholakia, actress Sunny leone and producer Ritesh Sidhwani. Several fan clubs of the star had apparently shared details of his journey on the social media and people had gathered at Vadodara Railway Station to meet and see the actor.
Among others, cricketers Irrfan and Yusuf Pathan, who reside in Vadodara, too were at the station to meet Khan, who came out of his coach and greeted his fans for just 20 seconds.
It was during the scramble to see the Bollywood star that Farid fell unconscious on the platform. Though Farid was rushed to hospital nearby, he was declared dead on arrival by doctors.
Farid was a member of the Gujarat unit of the Samajwadi Party and earlier served as its State minority cell president. He then resigned from the post in 2012. later, Khan described as “really unfortunate” the death of Farid, who was a uncle of one of the journalists travelling with him. He had apparently come to meet his niece when the tragic incident happened.
Khan told reporters at Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, “One of our colleagues was travelling. Her uncle came down to see her at Vadodara. He suffered from a cardiac arrest. It was really unfortunate. We started the journey thinking we all will travel, spend time with each other. When one of your own loses someone one on a trip like this, it saddens us all. On behalf of everyone, our prayers and blessings are with the whole family. She has reached there. I just spoke to her...We have some of our people with the family members there.”
A RPF official said that the crowd had begun gathering at the platform to get a glimpse of the star from 9.00 pm on Monday, adding, “The authorities even closed the ticket window at around 9.30 pm as a preventive measure. The Railway authorities also diverted the train to a different platform than usual for better crowd management.”
The official said that their main focus was to keep the crowd away from the train as they feared that narrow space between the train and platform could prove fatal if the crowd was not kept away from the train.