‘Yes, he is definitely the world’s luckiest baby’

AN Australian mother relived the terrifying moment her baby rolled beneath an oncoming train in his pram, and revealed that she had been convinced her son was killed.

Millions of television and internet viewers around the world have watched video footage of the second Shweta Verma let go of the pram, which rolled off a Melbourne railway platform just as a train pulled into the station.

The dentist, who was travelling with her only child on a train for the very first time, said “everything went blank” as the train ground to a halt 30 metres down the track with the pram underneath.

“I thought I’d lost my child, who I love more than anyone or anything else,” she said.

The 29-year-old said she had taken the pushchair brake off to get ready to board the train, but momentarily let go of the buggy to pull her trousers up a bit.

“My hands left the pram for a fraction of a second and suddenly it was flying off the platform.”

The pram was jolted 30 yards along the tracks at Ashburton station beneath the 250-tonne train. Six-month-old Saurish escaped with just a few bruises and scratches on his face.

Her voice shaking, she added: “There was a downward slope on the platform and it rolled away so quickly I couldn’t catch it. I tried to grab it but it had gone. All I remember is that my first reaction was to grab for the pram. I was about to jump down after it, then everything went blank.”

Ms Verma thought her baby didn’t stand a chance and was paralysed with fear. But she then heard the most amazing sound of Saurish crying.

She said: “Everything was so fast and terrifying. I was crying, ‘What has happened to my baby, my baby, my baby!’”

Ms Verma added: “The first feeling was ‘My baby is alive!’ It was the most incredible moment I have ever experienced.”

The video shows Ms Verma stumble as she made a despairing leap forward for the handle of the pram.

Fellow passengers stared in horror as the train hit the pram at 35km/h, and the driver tried frantically to stop.

Ms Verma leapt onto the tracks with 18-year-old student Aaron Dryden, who crawled five metres under the train to recover Saurish.

The Melbourne schoolboy said he jumped on to the tracks without a thought for his own safety and ran to where the train had come to a halt. He crawled under the train to find the damaged pram.

“When we got to him, the pram was lying on its side and he was strapped in, looking perfectly fine,” Aaron said. “The pram was acting like a cocoon, protecting him.

“Shweta unbuckled the harness and we got him out. I took off my coat and put it around him.”

Ms Verma said that although Saurish was not physically injured, he was suffering from severe shock.

“I can’t imagine what he was hearing and looking at,’ she said.

“We lifted Saurish out and then I was holding him in my arms. People were saying I shouldn’t be doing that in case there were any internal injuries, but by that stage I wasn’t going to let him go.

“I would equate it to having been in excruciating pain and shock, and suddenly being washed with an overwhelming feeling of relief,” said Mr Verma.

“I was crying. I’d been thinking, ‘Oh God’ — and now all I could say was ‘Thank you God. You have taken good care of him and it is because of your grace he is in my arms’.

“He was still crying, but he was with the person he was most familiar with. He seemed to know, ‘I’m okay now, I’m in my mother’s arms’.

“Yes, he is definitely the world’s luckiest baby.”

In a deal thought to be worth around A$100,000 (€61,000), the dentist gave interviews to a gossip magazine and a television programme called A Current Affair.

Asked if she will ever put the incident behind her, Ms Verma said: “Honestly, no.”

But she said the family was trying to resume normal life.

“I have to take him out, life never stops, we have to move on. I have to get over it, and it’s not good for the baby.”