The Identities And Details On The Male And Female Who Sat On The NYC Subway Tracks And Were Killed Have Been Released

Two 24-year-old New Jersey friends just starting their careers were fatally struck by a southbound 4 train after ending up on the tracks at Manhattan’s Spring Street station early Sunday, police and sources said.

Malaika Chitre of Dayton and Navam Kaul of Sayreville, longtime pals and 2024 Rutgers University graduates, were sitting on the roadbed around 3:15 a.m. when the train barreled in. The operator slammed the emergency brake but couldn’t stop in time. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. About 100 passengers were evacuated.

Sources told The Post that Kaul either fell or made his way onto the tracks. Chitre climbed down after him and appeared to be pulling him toward her, and laughing, in the seconds before impact. Harrowing bystander video circulating online shows the pair sitting calmly as the train approached.

Investigators are looking into whether one or both were so intoxicated they didn’t grasp the danger until it was too late, law-enforcement sources said. No suicide note was found, though that possibility has not been ruled out.

Chitre had been working as a quality operations specialist at Acadia Pharmaceuticals in Princeton and had just begun a Doctor of Pharmacy program at Temple University in August. She graduated from South Brunswick High School in 2020 and earned a public-health degree with a business minor from Rutgers.

Kaul, whose family emigrated from Nepal decades ago, was a financial data analyst at Bloomberg. He graduated from Sayreville War Memorial High School and Rutgers Business School with a finance degree. Friends described them as part of the same tight-knit South Asian social circle.

“They grew up in the same world,” Rajnikant Pipalia, whose son was close with Kaul, told The Post.

The station was shut down after the crash. The probe into exactly how the pair ended up on the tracks, and why they stayed there, remains active.