Two 24-year-old New Yorkers who were struck and killed by a fast-moving subway train had been friends since their university years.
Navam Kaul and Malaika Chitre died instantly after a Number 4 train ran over them at around 3.15am on Sunday.
Shocked passengers recorded footage of the pair seated side by side on the tracks at Canal Street station in Lower Manhattan, where they appeared to be holding one another.
Online speculation quickly suggested the friends were a couple involved in a suicide pact. However, police believe Chitre had gone onto the tracks in an effort to rescue Kaul.
Chitre worked as a quality operations specialist for Acadia Pharmaceuticals in Princeton, New Jersey, following her 2024 graduation from Rutgers University.
During her time at Rutgers, she served as scholarship coordinator for the Omega Phi Alpha National Service Sorority and as public relations director for the Ashley Lauren Foundation.
The ambitious young professional had recently begun pursuing a doctorate in pharmacy at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Her social media posts offered glimpses of a full life in the months before the fatal NYC subway incident, including a Tame Impala concert and a trip through Italy with friends.
Malaika Chitre, 24, worked in quality operations at Acadia Pharmaceuticals in Princeton, New Jersey, after earning her Rutgers degree in 2024
Navam Kaul, 24, had spent the past year and a half working as a financial data analyst at Bloomberg in New York City and was raised in Sayreville, New Jersey
Both were killed when a Number 4 train ran over them at Canal Street station in lower Manhattan about 3.15am on Sunday. Video showed them sitting calmly on the tracks
Kaul had a similarly successful resume after attending Rutgers at the same time as the woman who is believed to have died trying to save his life.
He worked as a financial data analyst at Bloomberg in NYC for the past year and a half and grew up in Sayreville, New Jersey, where his parents moved from Nepal about 30 years ago.
The pair met at Rutgers where they moved in the same social circles despite studying different majors, and became close friends.
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Police said they were investigating whether either Kaul or Chitre were impaired by drugs or alcohol, which could have caused them to be unaware of the danger.
Kaul is believed to have either fallen or clambered onto the tracks, prompting Chitre to go after him, police sources told the New York Post.
Chitre appeared to be trying to pull Kaul towards her in the moments before their deaths, the sources said, possibly in a failed effort to get him out of the way.
Investigators have not ruled out that one or both was trying to take their own life, but said a suicide note had not been found.
Why the video showed them sitting calmly in the path of the train is unclear.
The train driver attempted to apply the emergency brakes, but it was too late and the train struck both the man and the woman.
Chitre’s social media profiles showed her attending a Tame Impala concert and traveling in Italy with friends in the months before her death
Chitre appeared to be trying to pull Kaul towards her in the moments before their deaths, the sources said, possibly in a failed effort to get him out of the way
Kaul is believed to have either fallen on clambered onto the tracks, prompting Chitre to go after him
Navam and Chitre died just a week after a Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker was killed by a train while working on the tracks.
Moet McCullum, a 41-year-old construction-flagger from Brooklyn, was on the southbound tracks at the Yankee Stadium station about 11.30pm on September 3 when she was fatally struck by a D Train.
She had been preparing to set up lights on the tracks to alert oncoming trains to the presence of a work crew, but the operator of the D Train did not report seeing any lights and continued down the tracks at normal speed.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating her death alongside a separate probe by union officials and New York City Transit’s Office of System Safety.