The young man and woman crushed to death by an oncoming subway train in lower Manhattan earlier this week had been seen hugging and kissing on the platform before one appeared to lose balance and the pair plummeted onto the tracks, sources told the News.
The sources said the young man, Navam Kaul, hit his head in the fall. The woman, Malaika Chitre, appeared to be trying to pull Kaul to her when they were struck by the No. 4 train as it barreled into the Spring St. station just before 3:15 a.m. Sunday. Initial reports had said the two appeared to be sitting on the track and the woman appeared to be laughing.
A police source said investigators are trying to determine if alcohol was involved. Investigators do not believe the incident was a double suicide.
The pair, both 24, were young professionals from New Jersey who’d studied at Rutgers University. It was not clear where they had been in New York prior to the tragic accident.
Chitre was working as a quality operations specialist for Avadia Pharmaceuticals in Princeton, New Jersey for the past year, according to her LinkedIn profile. This August, she began a four-year program at Temple University to earn a doctorate degree in pharmacy. She lived in Dayton, New Jersey, according to police sources.
Kaul worked as a financial analyst for Bloomberg as a contract worker from May 2025 to May 2026, according to the outlet. He lived in Sayreville, New Jersey, police said. Attempts to reach Kaul’s family were not successful.
Both victims formerly studied at Rutgers University, according to a spokeswoman for the university.
Kaul attended the Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick from fall 2020 to spring 2024, but did not receive a degree. Chitre received a Bachelor of Science degree in May 2024 from Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences.
“We are saddened to learn of the tragic death of these two former students,” said Dory Devlin, assistant vice president of news and media relations at Rutgers.
Chitre graduated in 2020 from South Brunswick High School, where she was a member of the biomedical engineering club and volunteered for the Red Cross and a community service club called Viking Volunteers, her LinkedIn shows.
Kaul graduated in 2020 from Sayreville War Memorial High, where he was in the National Honor Society, president of the school’s science club, and treasurer of the math club, according to his LinkedIn. The profile said he volunteered at his hometown’s public library and at the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home in Menlo Park.
The tragedy behind their deaths capitivated the city after a horrifying video showed the pair on the tracks as the train pulled in went viral on social media.
As the train bore down on the Chitre and Kaul on Sunday, the train operator told supervisors she “saw a man and woman sitting on the tracks,” according to an MTA incident report obtained by the News. She told supervisors the woman appeared to be pulling the man toward her when they were hit by the train, the report says.
The disaster unfolded near the uptown end of the station, according to the MTA report. Four cars of the 10-car No. 4 train made it into the station before the emergency brakes stopped the subway train.
Kaul and Chitre died at the scene, their bodies recovered from under the third and fourth cars of the train.
The downtown local track curves slightly before entering the Spring St. station. It was not immediately clear at what point the train operator was able to see the pair on the tracks.
Approximately 100 passengers were aboard at the time of the incident. They were evacuated onto the platform.
With Rebecca White and Roni Jacobson
