Britain’s killer track kills many Asian women

LONDON: More and more Indian women are throwing themselves in front of trains and are pushing up suicides rates on rail tracks in Britain.

A report released on Saturday night showed that an astonishing one-third of suicides in England and Wales took place on tracks going past Southall, which has a very large Indian community.

Figures from a report by First Great Western train network show that 80 out of the 240 suicides that took place on rail tracks last year were on the line that went through Slough, Southall and Hayes in West London, known as ‘Little India’.

The First Great Western manager who compiled the report said in one week in July there were four suicides in four days on the track between Slough and London. He also said “a disproportionately high number of total fatalities in the area were women of Asian origin”.

Women’s rights group said the suicides were linked to the “prevalence of domestic violence in Asian families”. Coming close on the heels of the landmark life sentence for Bachan Athwal and her son Sukhdave Singh Athwal for the murder of her daughter- in-law Surjit Athwal, the statistics have shocked the close-knit Asian community in Southall already reeling under allegations of being ‘oppressive towards women’.

“Some women feel trapped and isolated and see it as the only way of escaping problems such as adultery, domestic violence and alcoholism,” said Yasmin Whittaker Khan, a playwright.

In 2005, a young mother, Navjeet Sidhu jumped in front of the Heathrow Express at Southall clutching her five-year-old daughter and 23-month-old son — killing all three instantly. The sensational tragedy scarred the community. Navjeet’s mother Satwant Kaur following in her daughter’s footsteps committed suicide at the same spot six months later.

“There is a correlation between these suicides and violence in Asian homes,” said Hanna Siddiqui of the Southall Black Sisters. “Psychiatric research has shown they are rarely cases of mental disorders suggesting they are the result of social circumstances,” she added.

Network Rail, which operates the track infrastructure, said staff had averted three suicide attempts in Southall this year.