Monday, June 09, 2003

SAMaRiTan Samrat
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Just thought of penning down this incident after reading about a related incident in Gaurav's Blog.
I was returning late last month, around 11.30 pm . I saw a person lying near his bike in a pool of blood. I stopped to help him and flag down a vehicle, . Suddenly a group of slum urchins came and accosted me, they accused me of hitting that person, and started heckling me some of them were drunk. Some more people came later and we ultimately took the guy to Sancheti hospital. Then i went to the police station to inform , there one of these ruffians had already registered a complaint aginst me, saying that i knocked down the guy. I was shocked, I just couldnt react, the police then grilled me for some time took all my personal information, but thankfully with help of a other person who was sitting there with the police guy, seemed to be a local Dada or so, who on a whim just supported me . I was able to somewhat convince them of my innocence. If that Dada in a different mood had spoken something else it would have been difficult for me.
Then I went back to the hospital to see the injured person, thankfully he was not that serious but the bugger was drunk, he was a lower middle class sort of guy there was no identification only some phone numbers which i called but no one picked up, also maybe those urchins had filched his purse. The docs at Sancheti said take him to Sasoon we wont treat him here. this is a police case and so on. this guy had by then regained some conciousness he wanted to go home, though he was bleeding from his head. By now it was 1 am i was too tired and confused to think straight. I got hold of a autorickshaw paid him money and told him to drop off this guy at sassoon, i shud have gone myself but i had lost the stomach to brave it out with the police there for a second time.
I couldnt sleep properly for the next 2-3 days, always had a nagging fear of getting a call from the police station.

I shudder to think what would have happened if that person had died or was seriously injured, then I would have been in serious strife.