BHOPAL: Mohammed Mehboob didn’t know her but was willing to dive under a moving train to save her life. He still doesn’t know her name.

On the evening of February 5, Mehboob, 37, was returning from namaaz with a friend in
Bhopal ‘s Barkhedi area when he and some other pedestrians saw a goods train approaching. They stopped to let it pass.

“He crawled up to her, dragged her to the middle of the track-bed and kept her head down.”

To their horror, the group saw the goods train begin to roll towards her. Mehboob saw the girl trying to get up and fall down again. “It seemed she was frozen in fear,” recalled Mehboob, who works as a carpenter.

Even her parents stood rooted in terror, but Mehboob sprinted towards her. Realising that there wasn’t time to carry her to safety, he dived under the train just as it passed over the spot. He crawled up to her, dragged her to the middle of the track-bed and kept her head down.

The viral video shows him holding her hands and protecting her head as the train trundles overhead, with barely inches to spare. “She had a backpack which she was trying to save. I took it from her and kept it on her head to save her from being hit by anything protruding from the undercarriage,” he said. “My friend and the others were shouting to us, saying ‘stay down, stay down’. I was terrified. I knew I could be killed too but I didn’t let go of the girl,” he said.

After what seemed a lifetime, the last wagon and guard cabin passed over them and the duo looked up at the sky, unable to believe they were alive. The girl burst into tears. So did her parents, who ran to her and hugged her.

They thanked Mehboob and each went their own ways. The carpenter says he didn’t think much of it until a video of the dramatic rescue went viral on Friday and people flocked to his shop and house in Bag Farhat Afza, Aishbagh, to congratulate him. He doesn’t own a phone, so he didn’t even know the video had gone viral.

Mehboob is married and has a three-year-old girl. Asked why he risked his life to save someone he doesn’t know, Mehboob told TOI: “A close friend’s mother was run over by a train at the same spot around a month ago. I was deeply shocked. When I saw the girl in danger, I reacted instinctively. I couldn’t stand by and let her die.”

Mehboob was bewildered when an NGO arrived to felicitate him. Shoaib Hashmi, a resident of Jehangirabad, who runs a social workers’ group, said that he saw the video on a social media group and was stunned by Mehboob’s “courage to save a stranger”. “I tracked him down and we felicitated him. Mehboob doesn’t want any publicity, he does not even own a mobile phone. So, we had to persuade him to come to the event and we gifted him a mobile phone,” said Hashmi.