MADURAI: A 29-year-old cab driver spent over one hour and twenty minutes inside a fuel station lavatory in Madurai on Sunday with his right hand stuck inside an Indian-style toilet.
The Thanjavur resident was trying to recover his car’s key that had accidentally fallen into the toilet when his hand got stuck. According to firemen who rescued him from his predicament, Ramkumar (name changed) was returning home after dropping off his customers. Around 5 am, he stopped by a fuel station along the Madurai Bypass Road to attend nature’s call.
He was about to leave when his car’s key fell into the toilet. When he tried to get it out, his hand touched a cell phone that had ended up inside the toilet earlier. Believing that the key was behind the cell phone down the pipe, he pushed his hand deeper. “When he tried to pull his hand out, he could not. Leaving the key and the cell phone, he tried again, but in vain. We believe his hand got ‘air locked’,” said Station House Officer of Madurai Fire and Rescue Service Station Venkadesan.
After 20 minutes, Ramkumar decided to seek help. However, shouts for help did not derive any response from outside. In the end, he managed to push the door open using his legs and waited for someone to pass by.
Around 5.20 am, an employee saw him and alerted the firemen, who reached the spot within three minutes. “At the end of an hour-long operation, a team of firemen managed to safely remove Ramkumar’s hand by breaking the toilet,” sources said. A local car dealer arranged a duplicate key for Ramkumar who headed home a while later.