A survivor’s story
In 2013, Dr. Jerrom D’Cunha was traveling from Nashik to Mumbai on a luxury bus. The journey turned into a nightmare for him and several other passengers after the bus crashed into a motorbike, mounted a divider and collided with an SUV before falling into a ditch. Nine passengers, including two children were killed instantly. The vehicle was over-speeding; the driver had ignored the passengers’ requests to drive cautiously. Dr. D'Cunha suffered fractures to his pelvic bone, ribs, spinal cord and neck, but there was no vehicle to transport him and the other survivors to a hospital.
As they lay on the roadside, their belongings were stolen by passersby. When a truck finally arrived to take them to a hospital, Dr. D’Cunha was made to lie down on top of dead bodies. Even at the hospital, they were not given first aid, or even food and water for hours. In fact, they were robbed again inside the hospital premises by locals.
His disturbing account is an indictment—not only of the lack of regulations regarding tour operators, unruly drivers and failure of law and order during road accidents, but also the abysmal state of emergency medical care in India.