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23rd April 2023
12:11pm BST
A man who was urinating next to a train track was killed died after he was hit by part of a cow which a train had collided with.
82-year-old Shivdayal Sharma died instantly in the freak accident which occurred on Wednesday (April 19).
A Vande Bharat express train had hit a group of cows which had made their way onto the line in Alwar, Rajasthan, India.
India Today reports that a portion of one of the cow's body hit Shivdayal 30 metres away whilst he was "relieving himself on the tracks."
A second person who was with Shivdayal narrowly escaped being struck by the projectile.
Sharma retired from his post as an electrician in the Indian Railways 23-years-ago.
His body has been sent for post-mortem.
Trains can reach speeds of 100mph on the portion of track the cows had wandered onto.
It is not unusual for Vande Bharat to have incidents with cows. Within days of the line's launch last October, a train suffered minor damage after colliding with cattle, and the next day the same train sustained damage to its nose panel after hitting a cow near Anand station in Gujarat.
The Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said collisions with cattles on tracks is unavoidable and that this had been kept in mind during the designing process of the semi-high-speed trains.
However, measures have been put in place to try and minimise the risk of cows on the line, such as the "cleaning of garbage and removal of wild vegetation" near tracks, as well as "frequent whistling at locations prone for cattle/animal run over."
Meanwhile, the Western Railways has decided to put metal fencing along stretches of track stop animals from straying onto the tracks and prevent accidents.
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