Humanity at its best: Passenger en route to funeral turns saviour for 3-year-old

Jyoti Punwani
Mumbai Mirror

Humanity is a strange thing. Once you realise your life has been saved, you want to save others, see them live." Thus said Farooq Mapkar, a passenger of the ill-fated Diva-Sawantwadi passenger train, which derailed last Sunday morning. 

 

Mapkar, 47, was going to his village in Chiplun and was lucky to escape with minor bruises. But all around him there were passengers trapped under others, or under parts of the broken train. 

 

Mapkar could have simply picked himself up and walked away. Instead, he stayed on to see how he could help, and that led him to rescue three-yearold Samruddhi Nakti, and get her admitted to hospital with help from three good Samaritans, including the drivers of an autorickshaw and a six-seater who charged him no fare. That she would lose her leg later, was a tragedy he wasn’t to know then. 

 

In the midst of the chaos that followed the accident between Nagothane and Roha on Sunday, Mapkar heard Samruddhi’s father repeatedly crying out: ’Save my daughter’. "The father was crushed under someone else’s weight, but I found his daughter and managed to extricate her," Mapkar said. Having gingerly puller her out from the train, Farooq loosely tied her leg which had broken, and then set off to find help. A family in a Maruti car stopped when he flagged them down, got off and allowed their driver to take Mapkar and the girl to the nearest station, Nagothane. 

From there, Mapkar found a six-seater whose driver took him and the girl to Roha bus stand. There, an auto driver took him to the nearest private hospital in Roha. 

 

"The doctor there immediately attended to her, but it was obvious he didn’t have all the facilities he needed," said Mapkar. By then, more patients began to arrive, and the doctor requested Mapkar to take two other patients too in a charitable Shiv Sena ambulance to the nearest government hospital in Alibag. 

 

"My wallet had fallen off somewhere in the accident, I had neither money nor my ticket with me," said Mapkar. The doctor offered him Rs 2,000, which Mapkar refused. He then took Samruddhi, and the other two patients, a teenage girl and man named Chavan, to the Civil Hospital in Alibag. Chavan, however, did not make it. 

 

But it was three-year-old Samruddhi’s courage that amazed Mapkar. "She must have been in great pain, but she uttered not a word. She sat on my lap quietly, giving me no trouble," Mapkar said. He stayed with her till she was admitted to the Alibag hospital, and then left for his home. Ironically, he had been heading to his uncle’s funeral, but ended up saving others. 

 

Samruddhi was later transferred to Sion hospital, where her leg had to be amputated. Her father has also been admitted there, but doesn’t know of the tragedy that has befallen his daughter, nor does he know his wife died in the mishap. Samruddhi’s elder sister is undergoing treatment in a Vashi hospital. 

 

Mapkar discounts the theory that a defect in the track caused the accident. According to him, the Diwa-Sawantwadi passenger is always late and always packed. It also has to make way for an express train that follows. Hence the Diwa-Sawantwadi loco pilots tend to drive at breakneck speed to make up for lost time. "If the Railways ensure that the passenger train runs on time, such mishaps wouldn’t occur," Mapkar said. He also feels that the Railways should not insist on accident victims producing their tickets to claim compensation, as tickets can get lost in a mishap, as his did. 

 

Incidentally, Mapkar had cheated death once before - in the 1992-93 post-Babri Masjid demolition riots. He was shot in the shoulder from the back as he knelt to pray in Wadala’s Hari Masjid on January10, 1993. Six persons died in the police firing that day, four of them inside the mosque. Justice B N Srikrishna recommended strict action against then Assistant Sub-Inspector Nikhil Kapse, but the government refused to act. Mapkar successfully petitioned a court to order a CBI inquiry, but the CBI too exonerated Kapse. Mapkar has challenged that finding.