A 22-year-old woman in active labour lost her unborn baby in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, as an emergency ambulance in which she was being taken to a hospital stayed stuck in a large pothole on a badly damaged road for nearly two hours.
The incident occurred in the early hours of September 3, leaving the woman, Nidhi Singh, and her family in deep shock. The community health centre (CHC) where Nidhi was being taken by the ambulance was only nine km from her home at Gadhbar village in Agra’s Bah sub-division, but she could not reach on time due to the dilapidated road.
According to Nidhi’s husband Parvendra Bhadouria, 25, it took him and a few accompanying villagers two hours to pull the ambulance out of the pothole. They did it by tying the ambulance to a tractor with a rope. The pothole was as big as nearly 10 feet long and nearly 3 feet wide, said villagers.
Nidhi was rushed to a private hospital, where she delivered at 5 am on September 3. But the doctors there declared the baby born dead, said Bhadouria.
Videos of the ambulance being pulled out of the pothole with the help of a tractor went viral and caused resentment across Uttar Pradesh and the country. After the recent rains left the road badly damaged, the state government had taken no steps to repair it.
Watch the video here:
Even when Nidhi was first taken to the community health centre (CHC), she faced hurdles there. The doctors there told them that an operation would be required and that it could be done the next day, said the family. So they quickly rushed her to a private hospital, where she delivered the baby. The doctors there said the baby was born dead. It had stopped breathing due to the delay in medical care, they said.
Even though the road was lying in an extremely bad condition and villagers had alerted the officials, repair work was not carried out, said the villagers in a complaint. The sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Agra, Vinod Kumar, said an explanation has been sought from the PWD about the pothole—when it appeared and why it was not repaired.
The death of an unborn baby due to a bad road also triggered a political spat. Uttar Pradesh’s main Opposition party, Samajwadi Party (SP), attacked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s BJP government over the incident. SP president Akhilesh Yadav blamed corruption for the newborn’s death.
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“What could be more unfortunate than this due to the BJP’s corruption, even those who have not yet been born are being killed,” Yadav said in a social media post. Officials said on Tuesday, September 8, that the matter is under investigation.
