Hoshiyar Singh, a national-level fencing champion, died on Thursday after the the railway police allegedly threw him off the train at Sikandra Rao railway station in Uttar Pradesh when he refused to pay fine to enter women's coach.

Singh, accompanied by his mother, wife Jyoti and their child, was travelling to his hometown Kasganj from Mathura when the incident happened.

After ensuring that his family members had boarded the women's coach, he was travelling in the general compartment of the train.

A call by his ailing wife a little later prompted him to enter the women's coach again when the railway policemen allegedly demanded a fine of Rs 200 for entering the women's coach.   

He refused to pay, which led to the policemen attacking him and throwing him off the train.

"They pushed my husband off the train...I was not well and I called him to the ladies' coach. He was talking to me when the Railway Police came to him asked what he was doing in the ladies' coach," ANI quoted Singh's wife as saying.

"In the meantime, the train started moving and they pushed him... I want that strict punishment should be given to them," she said.

However, the railway policemen have refuted the allegations and claimed that Singh slipped while entering the train and got stuck between the train and the platform.

"Our investigation tells a different story. Singh, who was travelling with wife Jyoti, their child and his mother, got down at the station to refill his water bottle when the train started pulling out around 7.30pm. He ran but couldn't catch the door handle and slipped through the gap between the platform and the tracks. He was physically challenged in one hand," Hindustan Times quoted Superintendent of police (railways) GN Khanna as saying.

Khanna said that the police constables pulled the chain when they saw Singh stuck between the platform and the train.

"They along with station staff pulled out the mutilated body of Singh. In the meantime, as soon as the train stopped, his family members and some other people had begun shouting that the constables had thrown the man out."

The police have, however, registered a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against two constables, a guard of the Mathura-Kasganj passenger train and a few officials of Sikandra Rao station.

Singh had won a bronze medal in the under-17 national championship held in Kerala in 2005.

A similar incident happened in 2011 with a national-level volleyball player. Athlete Arunima Singh was thrown out of a moving train after which she lost her right leg.