2024-09-26 01:54:37
To what extent can someone with a human appearance become a monster? Even so much that a man on oxygen support starts sexually harassing his wife in the ambulance? The answer is yes – even so much. This incident of Uttar Pradesh, which has become ruthless towards crime and criminals under the Yogi Adityanath government, will shake you from within. What happened to a woman travelling in an ambulance from the state capital Lucknow to Siddharthnagar is hard to believe. The ordeal of the victim woman will force you to think whether someone can commit such an inhuman act under the influence of lust! Just imagine, the driver and his companion molested the woman in the ambulance. Not only this, when she protested, the monsters removed the oxygen mask from her ailing husband and threw him out of the ambulance. Today the woman’s husband is no more in this world. The incident happened on August 29.
Horrifying incident during journey from Lucknow to Siddharthnagar
The incident is as follows. The victim Rachna (name changed) was going from Lucknow to Siddharthnagar with her sick husband. On the way, ambulance driver Suraj Tiwari and his companion started molesting Rachna. Rachna said, ‘My husband fell very sick after Rakshabandhan.’ He used to work in Mumbai. He had liver disease. He consulted doctors in Mumbai but even after blood transfusion, his condition kept deteriorating. They returned to Siddharthnagar so that the family could take care of him.
Rachna said, ‘The local hospital could not treat him. They referred us to KGMU Trauma Centre in Lucknow. It is a big hospital but there are a lot of patients here. They told us that they did not have any vacant beds, so they could not admit my husband.’ She further said, ‘I hired an ambulance which took us to a private hospital on Aravali Marg in Indiranagar on the night of 27 August.’ Here Rachna faced the problem that many Indian families face. The cost of treatment was so high that whatever little savings they had were also exhausted.
A woman got trapped in the cunning of the ambulance driver and…
Rachana said, ‘My husband was hospitalised for two nights and I was given a bill of Rs 2 lakh. I did not have that much money, so my family mortgaged the land of the house to bear the cost of treatment. But his condition did not improve. He was no longer able to breathe without an oxygen mask. The cost of treatment was so high that I was forced to ask the doctor to discharge him. I called my brother who works in Ahmedabad for help. We decided to go back to Siddharthnagar. Someone gave us the number of an ambulance. When we talked, the driver (Suraj Tiwari) agreed to take us there.
She said, ‘On August 29, at 6:30 pm, we left Indiranagar hospital. My brother had reached Lucknow by then. My brother and I were sitting on the seat next to my husband who was lying on the stretcher. My husband had a face mask connected to the oxygen cylinder. We stopped at a petrol pump and then started on the highway that would take us to Siddharthnagar. After reaching Ayodhya bypass, the driver requested me to sit in the front. He said that the police can stop the ambulance at night. They will not stop if they see a woman sitting.’ She said, ‘I ignored him, but he kept insisting. After some time, I agreed. If this helps us save time on the road, then why not. But Suraj Tiwari was in no hurry. He stopped the ambulance near a dhaba in Ayodhya.’
The patient’s condition worsened and the ambulance driver was busy eating and drinking
The ambulance driver and his companion wanted to have dinner. But they didn’t just eat. They also drank alcohol while a critical patient was still halfway to their destination. Rachana says, ‘When Suraj Tiwari and his companion returned to the ambulance, they smelled of alcohol. This made me nervous. But they entered from both sides and I was stuck between them. Suraj Tiwari started the vehicle. We were on our way again. It was late and there was less traffic.’
The woman became emotional while describing the brutality of the driver and conductor. She said, ‘Both the men came close to me and I was feeling suffocated by the smell of alcohol coming from their breath. And then I froze. Their hands were on my back. When I touched them, I pulled myself back and pushed them away, but they were very strong. When I resisted, they became more aggressive. I tried to free myself but could not. I screamed but my voice could not reach the driver’s cabin due to the glass windows. Still my brother and husband realized that I was in trouble. My brother shouted for help and banged on the cabin wall to stop the driver.’
A woman was molested and then the limit of cruelty was crossed
Rachana says, ‘But Suraj Tiwari kept driving like a maniac. Both of them did not leave me. I sat on the seat for more than an hour surrounded by the two men and resisting their attempts to touch me. Then as we approached the colony, both of them got very angry at me.’ Suraj Tiwari stopped the ambulance on the main road near Pragati Nursery. The two men got down, opened the rear door and pulled off my husband’s oxygen mask. My brother tried to stop them but they pushed him away. They pulled my husband out of the stretcher and threw him on the road, then dragged my brother out, pushed him into the driver’s cabin next to mine and locked it.
According to Rachna, the ambulance driver and his companion snatched Rs 10,000 from her purse, her mangalsutra and the anklets she was wearing and pushed her and her brother out of the ambulance and drove off. She says, ‘My brother dialled 112 and 108. The police and ambulance arrived at the spot simultaneously. The police took our statement and advised us to get my husband admitted to a hospital and then come back to lodge an FIR. The 108 ambulance took us to the district hospital in Basti. My husband’s condition deteriorated. The hospital authorities asked us to take him to Gorakhpur Medical College. But by the time we reached Gorakhpur, he had died.’
The patient could not be saved, the accused surrendered
The woman said that the severe injuries he suffered when he was thrown out of the ambulance and the precious minutes he was forced to breathe without an oxygen mask left him beyond his means. “Our world was destroyed in two days, but I wanted to file an FIR. My husband deserves justice. The police in Basti listened to us but refused to register an FIR. They told us that since the ambulance had left from Lucknow, we should file the case there,” she said.
Rachana says, ‘My husband’s last rites were performed on September 1. We went to Lucknow to lodge an FIR on September 3, but this time we were told that the incident had taken place in Basti, and the FIR would also be lodged there. A distant relative who works in the government contacted senior officials and on their instructions, the FIR was finally registered on September 4.’ Meanwhile, the main accused Suraj Tiwari surrendered before the Lucknow District Court on the evening of September 12.