Thiruvananthapuram: The man who attacked two women on a moving train and pushed one of them out near Varkala had confronted the victims more than once before the assault, testified Shankar Paswan, a native of Bihar and an eyewitness.

The accused, identified as Suresh Kumar, was smoking a cigarette while standing against the seat on which the two women were sitting. When the women asked him not to smoke there, the situation snowballed into an argument.

About 15 minutes later, a guard on the train passed through the compartment and confronted Suresh Kumar for smoking. Believing that the guard had arrived after being alerted by the women, the accused once again picked up an argument with them. It was during this exchange that he suddenly pushed Sreekutty out of the moving train. When the accused attempted to push Archana as well, Shankar rushed to intervene. By then, Archana was dangling from the hands of the accused, on the verge of falling out.

Shankar, meanwhile, said he had no knowledge that the police were searching for him. He is employed with a firm located inside the Kochuveli industrial area. Though the attack on the train and Shankar’s rescue act became major news in Kerala, Shankar, a migrant worker, was completely unaware of all this, the Railway Police said. This was why he did not come forward to the police.

The police finally managed to trace Shankar Paswan during an investigation based on CCTV visuals. They focused their probe on those deboarding the train at different railway stations after Varkala. For the Kerala Express, the train in which the attack took place, the remaining stops after Varkala are Pettah and Thiruvananthapuram Central. By tracing the CCTV visuals, the police confirmed that the man wearing a red shirt, who saved Archana from falling , had deboarded at Thiruvananthapuram Central Railway Station. They also obtained CCTV visuals of the man in the red shirt hailing an autorickshaw from the station.

The next mission for the police was to identify the autorickshaw driver. Since it was a nighttime trip, the autorickshaw driver clearly remembered dropping a man in a red shirt at Kochuveli, and this detail proved crucial for the investigation team. By narrowing down their probe to the Kochuveli area, the police were finally able to trace Shankar.