For several heart-stopping moments on Saturday, an ambulance with a bleeding child inside was kept waiting by the traffic police at a major crossing in Delhi, for VIP movement. One outraged eyewitness live-streamed the incident near the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in central Delhi.
“What if the child dies? Who will be responsible?” a furious relative is heard saying in the video to policemen who refuse to remove the barricades set up for the convoy of visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. “Five minutes”, the traffic police kept saying.
Several cars moved to let the ambulance pass. A small crowd then forced the barricades aside, letting the ambulance go before sliding them back in place.
Several witnesses are seen pleading with the police, who ignore the wails of the ambulance as they track another sort of siren – one on VIP cars.
One person asks, “Let the ambulance go…Are VIPs more important than the life of a child who is bleeding?” Another voice says, “Are you waiting for the boy to die?” The entreaties are apparently wasted on the policemen.
Later, as the video went viral on social media, the police said they followed the protocol and the ambulance was held up for only a couple of minutes.
In their version of the story, it was policemen who escorted the ambulance and cleared its way.
“The ambulance was stuck behind several cars. We got the passage cleared and brought it ahead. In a span of few minutes, it was allowed to go,” said a senior police officer.
The two-minute video has been shared by nearly 12,000 people and viewed by over 500,000 since it was uploaded by Preet Narula, a witness.
