Careless attitude: Rail officials blind to injured man crying in pain

Bengaluru: In a shocking accident, a businessman from Aurangabad, Maharashtra, lost both his limbs and revealed both the insensitivity of the public and the absence of basic emergency facilities at the Bangalore Cantonment railway station. The 44-year-old Bipin had come to the city on business and on his way back he hopped on to a wrong train. As soon as he realised this he jumped off the moving train. Sadly, after the jump both his limbs were crushed.

"I lay there in a pool of blood for almost fifty minutes,” recalled Bipin, “screaming for help, but nobody from the railway station came to help me. There was no emergency team to tackle the situation."

But there were still a few helpful fellow-travellers. Like the one, for instance, who informed Bipin’s wife of the accident. "I received a message from a good samaritan late at night on September 16. It was a fellow passenger and he told me that my husband had met with a horrific accident and needed help immediately. I didn’t believe it at first, but then my husband called and spoke to me. I was horrified and shell shocked and did not know what to do," says his wife.

"For fifty minutes he had been lying there asking for help but nobody from the cantonment railway station came to help, they even lacked basic emergency care. Worse, onlookers, instead of helping my husband, were taking his pictures and whatsapping," remembers his stunned wife. Bipin was then rushed to Vikram hospital after a telephone call was made to the emergency ambulance services by the railway authorities who had not been in sight for more than thirty minutes. He was admitted on September 16 midnight with crushed legs.

Says Dr Vasudev Prabhu, consultant, orthopaedic and knee replacement surgeon of Vikram Hospital who was the treating surgeon: "When he came to our hospital for emergency care his BP was only 50 and he was on the verge of death. He had lost almost 3 litres of blood on the railway tracks. 30%-40% of the circulating volume was gone and he was heading towards hypovolemic shock." The doctors took immediate resuscitating measures to stabilize him.

"There were multiple fractures of the pelvic area along with a fractured sacrum bone and injury to the kidney. We used nearly 5-6 packets of blood to replenish the blood loss. His limbs had to be amputated," says Dr Vasudev. “He is now stable. However, we have advised the family to take extreme care of his injuries for almost four weeks,” says Dr Vasudev. The family decided to speak to the media to bring their apathy to light and also to expose the lackadaisical attitude of the Cantonment railway authorities.

“We need compensation as the railway lacked emergency care. Also the gap between the platform and the train was huge, which was the main reason my husband fell on to the tracks and not the platform,” says his wife.