Shocking video footage of a man pleading for help from passing motorists for nearly an hour after his family got into a road accident has led to accusations of “shameful” public apathy in India.
The video footage, which surfaced Monday, showed the man cradling his injured 4-year-old son, screaming for help while cars, buses and motorbikes drove past his bloodied wife and 10-month old daughter.
Police said the man’s appeals went unheard for 40 minutes after a speeding truck collided with his motorcycle and fled the scene inside a newly built tunnel in the city of Jaipur.
A worker in a toll booth noticed the stricken family and called the police, who brought the mother and daughter to the SMS hospital, according to AFP. Both had died before arriving in the hospital, said Dr. D.S. Meena, in charge of the SMS emergency unit. The man and his son suffered light injuries.
The lives of the man’s wife and daughter could have been saved if people had not turned a blind eye, a relative said. “It’s shameful that apathy took two lives,” he said.
“It’s the duty of all people to take such victims to hospital because lives could be saved,” Jaipur traffic police chief Lata Manoj told AFP.
