BANGALORE: At midnight on Sunday, a group of people were standing in the middle of the BEML Road, near the entrance to Michael Palya. On the pavement beside them stood a man sprawled face down.
Blood was flowing from his face, the pavement dirt was getting bloodied. A crushed scooter, a Honda Activa, lay on the side; a helmet lay thrown 20 feet away. The small group was becoming a crowd, people were afraid to touch him, nobody knew if the lifeless body had any life left in it.
The accident scene was on my way back to home. I stopped and instantly called the police control room. I asked the police to come to the spot and immediately send for an ambulance. Others in the crowd were frantically calling ambulance services in the city, anxiously giving them directions.
The wait, an agonising one, for the police and the ambulance had begun.
Patience was in short supply, people took turns calling the police. There were three police stations in a radius of three kilometres from the accident site.
People were walking around the victim — afraid to touch him — and retracing with their words the sequence of events that caused the accident. Near the mangled remains of the scooter lay the rear view mirror a vehicle, presumably the one that had knocked THE scooter driver down.
Suddenly, a mobile phone rang, from inside the victim’s pocket. The crowd of about 20 turned edgy; the wait for the police and the ambulance turned more painful. It was nearly 30 minutes since I had reached the spot and there no sight of the police. Curses and abuses for the police were coming thick and fast.
Finally, a lone policeman, Shankariah, ASI, Indiranagar Traffic station, showed up. He didn’t know what to do, he called the control room from his radio and asked for a Hoysala. The victim needed an ambulance, the golden hour — the first 60 minutes after an accident — was ticking away.
As angry crowd screamed at Shankaraih and forced him to ask the control room for an ambulance. The control room’s advice: use an autorickshaw to move the victim.
The unconscious man’s mobile phone rang again. The policeman asked the people to move the body and get the phone. He wasn’t willing to do it himself.
The victim was moved, his pockets emptied for identification papers. The last phone call was from his wife. Somebody from the crowd called the wife back, who was told that her husband has had an accident. Just then a 108 service ambulance showed up. A quick check by paramedics and the victim was proclaimed dead.
However, the ambulance staff refused to shift the victim as they had to wait for police clearance. The crowd, which was by now on a short fuse, roughed up the ambulance staff. The lone cop wanted to leave with the ambulance.
Startled at his decision to leave the crime scene which held clues about the vehicle responsible for a man’s death, I asked him to get some other cop to guard the scene from where no photos or any other evidence had been collected.
At last the ambulance left the spot, people grumbled and the crowd dispersed.
The crushed scooter remained, so did the shattered glass.
The next morning (Monday), the Indira Nagar police told me that the time of death was at 12.40 am. The first call for help was made 30 minutes before, when the man had been alive .
m feedback@expressbuzz.com
