Saheli Roy

Calcutta, June 14: Accident victim Saheli Roy, 25, might have lived if police had followed rules and rushed her to the nearest hospital instead of a state-run hospital 6km way.

Her family and colleagues also believe she would have had a chance had NRS Medical College Hospital not cited red tape to delay her possible transfer to Apollo Gleneagles.

Saheli, two of her colleagues from Deccan and their driver were injured in a collision with a lorry on EM Bypass, at a spot hardly a five-minute walk from Apollo, in the early hours today.

The police took them to NRS, a 20-minute drive away. Saheli, due to marry in December, died of her head injuries two hours later at 5am.

Sulekh Roy, 31, and Manish Singh, 27, were later shifted to Apollo and driver Jahangir Alam to Charnock Hospital.

“Apollo was the closest. Why did the cops take them to NRS?” asked Saheli’s uncle Ramanath Ganguly.

The norms say police must take accident victims to the nearest healthcare unit. They do not say this unit has to be a state-run hospital. Traffic police bosses admitted this, with special additional commissioner Ranveer Kumar promising to investigate.

“We kept asking (the NRS doctors) to discharge Sulekh and Saheli, who were critical, but even after some 90 minutes they kept saying the paperwork wasn’t ready. Sulekh would have died too had we not got him shifted,” a colleague said.

NRS medical superintendent L.K. Ghosh denied any complaint from the patients’ relatives but promised “an inquiry on Monday”.

Sulekh, with face and leg fractures and brain clots, is in the ICU, critical but stable. Singh has a dislocated hip.

Saheli had been a member of Deccan’s ground support staff for three years. Her father Prabir Roy is a retired bank official.