Commuters at Vasai station bore witness to a teenager's brush with death yesterday, when the 18-year-old slipped into the gap between train and platform but survived with only minor injuries. The miraculous escape came despite five compartments of the train he had alighted from passing over him, before it stopped.

According to Vasai RPF inspector Santosh Kumar, the boy, identified as Rahul Prajapati, hails from Surat in Gujarat and was travelling on the Jamnagar-Tirunelveli Express. Around 11.20 am, when the train was pulling in at Vasai station, he jumped off without waiting for it to stop completely and, as a result, fell into the gap. He immediately started shouting, after which fellow passengers pulled the emergency chain.