Fact Check: Man Allegedly Travels 250 KM Sitting On Wheel Axle Of Pune-Danapur Express—True Or False?

A video went viral on social media in which a man claimed to have travelled around 250 km from Itarsi to Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh while sitting on the axle of a wheel of the Pune-Danapur Express train.

After being spotted by a railway official, the man said that he did not have money for the ticket and so had to take this dangerous route.

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) officials rescued the man from the spot and took him into custody. Later, a case was filed against him and a probe was initiated.

Meanwhile, the railway ministry has dismissed the man's claims as "fake" and "misleading". Railway officials said that someone shot the video of the man coming out of the wheel axle of a stationary train and circulated it with the misleading claim that he had to hide near the wheelset because he did not have money to buy tickets.

"These reports are completely fake and baseless," said Dilip Kumar, Executive Director, Information and Publicity, Railway Board. "The person was just hiding near the wheel axle when the train was not moving. It is practically impossible for anyone to hide on the wheelset of a moving train as it moves along with the wheels," he said. "Some news organisations and social media influencers picked it up and made it viral without verifying its authenticity," Kumar added.

The Press Information Bureau's (PIB) Fact Check Unit (FCU) also took to X (formerly Twitter) and stated that the claim was "baseless". "In a video shared on social media, it's being claimed that a person travelled 250 km by sitting on the axle of a train wheel. This claim is baseless & misleading. The wheelset of a train keeps rotating continuously & it's impossible to travel sitting on it."