NEW DELHI: Outside Lok Nayak Hospital, two young ambulance drivers, Mohammad Faizan and Mohammad Hasan, stood amid a growing crowd where chaos unfolded. Both had just returned from one of the most harrowing calls of their careers, rushing four to five mutilated bodies from the Red Fort area after the powerful explosion.
“We got a call from the beat official who asked us to reach Lal Qila. We were told that blast hua hai. We managed to reach the location in seven minutes,” Faizan said, carrying visible sweat drops on his forehead. “We reached there, and some people picked up the bodies and kept in the ambulance. One ambulance could carry not more than two bodies. I bought at least five bodies to the hospital,” he said.
Hasan described a scene of utter devastation, cars burnt and overturned, flames still rising, and the air heavy with smoke and the smell of burning metal. “Bodies were lying on the ground. We saw the parts of bodies thrown at different places. These bodies were in terrible shape,” Hasan added.
It was the first time that either of them had seen such destruction up close. “We’ve handled road accidents, fires, and even stampedes,” Faizan said, “but this was different and something which happened very close to our location.”
After dropping the bodies at the hospital, both stood outside their ambulance, too shaken to move. Other ambulances kept pulling into the hospital one after another. A special corridor had been created for the victims, cordoned off tightly by police and hospital staff. Ordinary patients, unaware of where to go, ran from one gate to another, trying to find an entry. Some were seen pushing stretchers down the main road in desperation.
