A 22-year-old man — the only breadwinner for his mother, uncle, and aunt — died on Sunday near Cuttack station, when the Bengaluru-Kamakhya AC Express derailed.

Subhankar Roy had been on the train with his mother, Chitra Roy, returning home after she underwent critical heart surgery in Bengaluru. The news from Odisha cast a dark shadow over his family in Alipurduar, West Bengal.

“He was the only son in our whole family. He was my elder brother’s son. My sister and I don’t have a child; we used to treat him as our own,” his uncle, Vimal Chandra Roy, told reporters, his voice thick with grief. “How can God snatch him from us? We heard that only he died in this incident. How will we all live? We are all aging; he was the only hope of our next generation.”

Subhankar had only stepped away from his mother’s side for a moment. Just as she called him for lunch, he went to wash his hands near the compartment door. The sudden jolt of the derailment threw him off the train. He was the sole victim of the accident.

His aunt, Manju Roy, recounted the moment she received the call. “At 12.30, I got a call from boudi (mother of the deceased); she was on the same train. She said that her train met with an accident and the train was derailed. She, however, said that her son, who had gone to wash his hands in the basin, was nowhere to be found. I panicked, I started calling him on his phone, which kept ringing, but he couldn’t be traced. Later, he was found dead. I wish it was a bad dream. I don’t understand why so many people die of train accidents every now and then here,” she cried, her voice laced with disbelief and pain.

After completing his graduation, Subhankar used to work at a local steel furniture factory. Now, his family has no immediate means to travel to Cuttack to bring his body home or meet his grieving mother.

The Alipurduar district administration has stepped in to offer assistance. District Magistrate R Vimala directed SDPO Shrinivas MP and other officials to visit the family and provide support.