Promotional train travel strategy of Raees leaves one dead and two policemen injured

January 24, 2017 - 11:31 AM IST

When the makers of Raees devised their marketing plan of Shah Rukh Khan and others travelling by train from Mumbai to New Delhi to promote Raees, not even in the wildest of their dreams must they have thought that there could be a casualty while doing so. Readers may recall that, we had reported about Shah Rukh Khan boarding the ‘August Kranti Express’ from Mumbai and had halted at all the major stations like Andheri, Borivali, Surat, Vadodara, Ratlam, Kota, Savai Madhopur and Mathura.

Promotional train travel strategy of Raees leaves one dead and two policemen injured

Well, when the train reached Vadodara station, needless to say, the crowd went berserk after seeing their superstar Shah Rukh Khan at the railway station. All of this chaos and overcrowding resulted in a sudden and untimely death of one person and also two policemen got injured.

Speaking about the incident, the railway police said that there was multitude of Shah Rukh Khan's fans who had gathered in large number in order to have a glimpse of the star. The train, which arrived around 10.30 pm, halted for 10 minutes. Seeing the train arriving at the platform, the crowd present there went totally berserk and had begun banging the train’s window panes. They were even falling on top of each other. In order to control the maddening situation, the police, then, had to resort to lathi charge. Reports state that, amongst the crowd, one could see the cricketers Irrfan Pathan and his brother Yusuf Pathan, who had also come to the station to meet Shah Rukh Khan.

If that wasn't enough, when the train started moving from the station, there were again hordes of people who started running along with the train. It was because of the acute rush, one person died of breathlessness and two policemen, who were posted there to control the crowd, were injured. The deceased has been identified as Farheed Khan Sherani, who worked as a local politician. Farheed Khan Sherani was declared dead on arrival at a private hospital in Vadodara. Besides being a local politician, Farheed, was also related to one of a Mumbai based mediaperson Samina. Tweeting about the unfortunate incident, Samina, who was part of the media crew that was travelling along with team Raees on the train, posted, "We all are saddened by the News. It was not because of stampede. He suffered a cardiac arrest. The person happens to be a Journalist's uncle traveling with us on the same Train. It was shocking and disturbing.SRK was sad. Even we all are shocked. SRK provided proper help to the family. Just pray for the family everyone...RIP soul ! This journey is really Unexpected. #RaeesbyRail #UnexpectedThingHappended".

On reaching Delhi, Shah Rukh Khan has expressed his anguish over the incident while extending his condolence to the family of the deceased. Speaking to the media about the unfortunate incident, Shah Rukh Khan said, "We started the journey thinking we all will travel, spend time with each other when one of your own loses someone one trip like this, it saddens us all. One of our colleagues was traveling with us. Her uncle came down to see her at Baroda. He suffered from a cardiac arrest. It was really unfortunate. We have some of our people with the family members there. Hopefully God will bless her soon. On behalf of everyone, our prayers and blessings with the whole family. She has reached there. I just spoke to her. I think the burial is in an hour or half hour."