VIJAYAWADA: Around 5.20 pm on Monday, the mobile phone of K Sujatha, a domestic help at special branch police officer Anjaneya Prasad’s (name changed) residence, rang. It was Shyam, an auto driver, frantically calling to inform that her sexagenarian father, K Ramu, was found struggling to breathe along a road near B Colony in Ibrahimpatnam. Shyam, an acquaintance of Ramu’s, had already tried calling Sujatha’s brother and husband, but their phones were unreachable.
Sujatha requested that her father be taken to a hospital. The nearest medical facility was the Ibrahimpatnam PHC, which was 2.8 km away from B Colony. It would normally take 7-10 minutes to cover the distance by road. But Sujatha received another call from the driver a few minutes later saying the two were stuck in traffic at the Kotha Gate Centre. They were 1.5 km away from the PHC. “That was when she came running to me for help,” Anjaneya Prasad recalls. The traffic jam was the result of a rally taken out by YSRC members in support of their party president’s padayatra.
“I called up the auto driver and asked him how long the queue was. He said the vehicles were not moving at all. I immediately rang up one of the sub-inspectors in Ibrahimpatnam and put him on a conference call with the auto driver,” Anjaneya Prasad explains. “As there were many autos in the traffic jam, I wanted to identify the vehicle in which the patient was. The driver told me that he could see a police Rakshak vehicle nearby. At once, I called the driver of the vehicle and asked him to get the auto out of the jam and escort it till the PHC,” recollects the SI who did not want to be named.
Anjaneya Prasad and the SI, who were on a conference call, said it took about 10 minutes to get the auto out of the jam. “When the auto reached the PHC, the staff said Ramu was critical and advised that he be taken to a better hospital. Since he was already in an auto, we did not call an ambulance fearing delay,” they reason.The next destination — the hospital at Nimra Institute of Medical Sciences — was five km from the PHC.
The three good samaritans — auto driver Shyam, special branch officer Anjaneya Prasad and the SI — tried their best to ensure Ramu reached the hospital at the earliest. But when Ramu got medical attention around 5: 55 pm, it was too late. The doctors said he was brought dead. The police officials say that it took more than 30-40 minutes for Ramu to be taken to the hospital due to the road block caused by the rally. “Had there not been a road block, Ramu could have reached the hospital much earlier,” the police officials add.
When asked why they do not want their names to be revealed, they officials pointed out, “What would have happened if it wasn’t Shyam, the acquaintance of Ramu, who found the latter on the road? And what if the SI was somewhere far from the location? It was all a collective effort. All of us just did our duty. The only wanted is for Ramu to be alive” We have provided a safe place for the auto driver to stay to ensure that he would not face any intimidation or be influenced by Opposition party members. Protecting good samaritans is also our duty,” the officer said with a smile.
Case against YSRC men
Following a police complaint by the family members of K Ramu, a contract labourer at Dr Narla Tatarao Thermal Power Station (Dr NTTPS), cases have been registered against 11 opposition leaders including Ex-MLA Jogi for conducting a rally without permission