Two 24-year-old friends who had recently graduated from Rutgers University and were just beginning their careers were killed early Sunday after being struck by a subway train in Lower Manhattan.

Now investigators are trying to answer the question haunting everyone who knew them:

Why were they on the tracks?

Malaika Chitre and Navam Kaul were found on the roadbed at the Spring Street station shortly before a southbound No. 4 train entered the station at around 3:15 a.m.

The operator was unable to stop in time.

Both were killed.

Their final moments were captured in disturbing video that later circulated online, showing the pair sitting on the tracks shortly before the train arrived.

But police have not established exactly how they ended up there.

Law-enforcement sources said investigators are examining whether alcohol or drugs may have impaired one or both of them to the point that they did not fully understand the danger. Suicide had also not been ruled out, though no suicide notes were found.

Another possibility investigators were examining is that one of the two initially fell or climbed onto the tracks and the other followed in an attempt to help.

Sources said Chitre appeared to be trying to pull Kaul toward her shortly before the train struck them.

The train operator reportedly told supervisors that Chitre appeared to be laughing during those final moments — another detail that has only deepened the mystery surrounding what happened.

There is no confirmed evidence establishing that either victim intended to die.

And there is no official finding yet explaining whether intoxication played a role.

For their friends and families, those unanswered questions have made the tragedy even harder to understand.

“I was shocked,” said Sagid Qureshi, Kaul’s neighbor in Sayreville, New Jersey.

“He was a financial analyst, doing everything right.”

Qureshi said both young people appeared to be doing well and had their entire lives ahead of them.

That description was echoed repeatedly by people who knew them.

Chitre and Kaul had been longtime friends from central New Jersey and moved in overlapping social circles.

They both graduated from Rutgers University in 2024.

Their lives were only beginning to take shape.

Chitre went on to work as a quality operations specialist at Acadia Pharmaceuticals.

At the same time, she was pursuing a Doctor of Pharmacy degree at Temple University, according to her professional profile.

Her social-media pages showed an active young woman surrounded by friends, relatives and her beloved dog.

She had recently traveled through Europe, including stops in Florence and Rome.

A neighbor remembered her as a “bright, smart girl.”

That same neighbor struggled to reconcile those memories with what happened underground in Manhattan.

“Why on the track?” the neighbor asked.

It is the same question investigators are trying to answer.

Kaul, meanwhile, had also begun building a professional career after college.

His LinkedIn profile said he worked as a financial data analyst at Bloomberg, though a company source told the New York Post that he had been a contract employee and finished the role in May.

Friends described him as charismatic, funny and easygoing.

“Whenever he was around, it was really good energy,” one former high-school friend said.

Another family acquaintance described Chitre and Kaul as having grown up in similar communities and sharing many of the same social connections.

“They grew up in the same world,” Rajnikant Pipalia said.

That history makes their simultaneous deaths especially difficult for those who knew them.

These were not strangers who happened to encounter each other on a subway platform.

They were longtime friends.

They went through college around the same time.

They shared friends and cultural traditions.

And on Sunday morning, they died together.

The circumstances remain deeply unclear.

Video apparently shows them sitting calmly on the roadbed.

But video alone cannot explain their mental state.

It cannot establish whether they were intoxicated.

It cannot determine whether someone had fallen and the other person followed to help.

And it cannot prove suicide.

Those questions remain with detectives and the medical examiner.

Authorities have not publicly released toxicology findings or a final determination regarding the circumstances leading to the deaths.

The tragedy comes amid broader concerns about people being struck by trains in New York City’s subway system.

In 2023, MTA figures cited in previous reporting showed 241 people were hit by subway trains, including 97 who died.

Just over a week before Chitre and Kaul were killed, 41-year-old MTA worker and mother of three Moet McCullum was fatally struck by a train while working on tracks near Yankee Stadium.

But the Spring Street case stands apart because of the strange and unresolved circumstances surrounding the victims’ final minutes.

There was no obvious explanation.

No public note.

No immediate indication of what brought two successful young friends down onto an active subway track in the middle of the night.

Those who knew them are left with memories that seem completely disconnected from the final images now circulating online.

A promising pharmaceutical professional studying for an advanced degree.

A young financial analyst described as charismatic and funny.

Two Rutgers graduates.

Two longtime friends.

Both 24 years old.

And both, according to everyone around them, only beginning their adult lives.

That is what makes the question so painful.

Not simply how they died.

But how two young people with apparently so much ahead of them ended up sitting on subway tracks as a train approached.

For now, investigators do not have the answer.

Neither do the people who loved them.