Two 24-year-old New Jersey residents killed when they were struck by a subway train in Manhattan early Sunday were longtime friends and former Rutgers University students who were beginning their careers.
Malaika Chitre, of the Dayton section of South Brunswick, and Navam Kaul, of Sayreville, were killed when they were struck by a train at the Spring Street station shortly after 3 a.m., according to police and a report in the New York Post.
New York City police said officers responded to the station at about 3:14 a.m. and found a 24-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man on the roadbed after the two had been struck by a train. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
The NYPD does not publicly identify people killed in incidents that are not considered crimes, a department spokesperson told NJ.com.
Chitre and Kaul were identified in multiple published reports and in a statement from a Rutgers spokesperson.
“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.
Devlin said university records show Chitre received a bachelor of science degree in May 2024 from Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences.
Kaul attended the Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick from fall 2020 to spring 2024 but did not receive a degree, Devlin said.
Sajid Qureshi, Kaul’s neighbor in Sayreville, told the New York Post he was shocked to learn of the deaths.
“He was a financial analyst, doing everything right. From what I understand she was doing well, too – good people doing so well, with their whole lives ahead of them. It’s just so sad,” Qureshi said.
Both Chitre and Kaul had extensive ties to New Jersey.
Chitre graduated from South Brunswick High School in 2020 and earned a bachelor’s degree in public health with a minor in business administration from Rutgers University in 2024, according to her LinkedIn.
She was working as a quality operations specialist for Acadia Pharmaceuticals and in August began pursuing a doctor of pharmacy degree at Temple University’s School of Pharmacy.
Kaul graduated from Sayreville War Memorial High School in 2020 and studied finance at Rutgers Business School through 2024, according to his LinkedIn.
He had been working as a financial data analyst for Bloomberg since May 2025.
The two were longtime friends, according to published reports.
An MTA incident report, obtained by the New York Daily News, said the train operator saw two people on the tracks and attempted to stop the train.
Authorities have not publicly said why the two were on the tracks. The NYPD said the investigation is ongoing.
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