Where Cows Get Ambulances and Boys Bleed to Death

Soon after the ‘Yogi’ became CM, the state government had unveiled a fleet of ambulances to move ailing cows “to the hospital” and everyone cheered. But what about human beings? Is the Hindu chief minister of India’s most populated state even bothered about human casualties?

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is cow-friendly to a fault. Soon after the ‘Yogi’ became CM, the state government had unveiled a fleet of ambulances to move ailing cows “to the hospital” and everyone cheered. But what about human beings? Is the Hindu chief minister of India’s most populated state even bothered about human casualties? Thursday three Uttar Pradesh cops stood and watched two young boys die on a road in Saharanpur disregarding impassioned pleas to take them to the hospital because the blood from the boys will stain their car seats. A video has surfaced of the three faceless policemen’s “bystander apathy”.

The next video and pictures are of the mortuary, taken hours after the inhumanity shown on a dark road at the dead of night. The two boys bled to death on the road as the trio of men in uniform stood and watched as life ebbed, their police vehicle idling a couple of yards away, deaf and dead to the desperate cries of a youth to “please, please take them to hospital, they are dying Sir” – the three police officers aghast at the thought their car seats would get bloodstained.

“How can we sit on them?” one cop tells another. Yes, how? Policemen in any Indian city and town spend half their careers “sitting” in the office or in police cars, these days with a smartphone to keep them engaged with their private worlds. It is only when the stomach rumbles that the police car moves and that, to the nearest dhabha where our guardians of law and order sit down to a well-deserved meal for which not a rupee changes hands.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone when the three policemen in Saharanpur stood and held back stoically as lifeblood mixed with dust on the road. “Can’t let the blood soil our seats,” they murmured as civilians begged them to shift the “bachche” to hospital. “Arre bhaisaab leke chaliye, please, Sir, please.” A video taken by a passer-by shows the boys prone and motionless on the road as the three officers, who were suspended later, worried about the injury to their car seats.

Policemen are supposed to be “first responders” but on Thursday night these three exemplary examples turned heartless barbarians, who should now be hauled through the coals, not just with suspension but with dismissal, subjected to legal action. The district police chief says “exemplary action” will be taken against the three shameless policemen. Why? Because “our men allegedly refused to get medical help”, and because “a video is viral, prima facie, it seems the allegations are true.”

This is “bystander apathy”, said a talking head on TV, looking for catch-all terms to suit the occasion, incident. The anchor chipped in with “no words, no action is enough to condemn such incidents”. The two boys were riding a motorbike and the motorbike rammed into an electric pole, spilling both of them on to the road, with head injuries that killed them with a little help from the policemen. But for the video that surfaced the despicable three would have got away with their crime. A passerby is heard in the video pleading with the cops, “they are also somebody’s children…” The boys were dead by the time another police car slid to a halt at the spot and took the bodies to hospital. Indian policemen are for the most not only physically unfit they are also mentally and emotionally unfit. Sad but true.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath should repent of the death of the two boys because his vaunted police don’t have a heart and suffer from a hard case of Gai Hamaari Mata Hai.