JAP chief Pappu booked in Saran ambulance case

PATNA/CHHAPRA: The controversy over the 50 ambulances parked on the premises of Vishwa Prabha Community Centre (VPCC) at Amnour in Saran district on Friday took a dramatic turn when Amnour police lodged an FIR on Saturday against former MP and Jantantrik Adhikar Party (JAP) president Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav for making forced entry, damaging parked ambulances and misbehaving with the staff of the VPCC.
The FIR against Pappu was lodged by Panchayat Ambulance Drivers’ Coordinator Rajan Singh with Amnour police station. Marhoura DSP Indrajit Baitha inspected the VPCC campus on Saturday and collected information regarding Friday’s incident in which Pappu entered the premises without permission and misbehaved with the staff.
Pappu had raised the issue of ambulances purchased from the MPLAD fund of Saran BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy in 2019. Pappu alleged that the ambulances were kept covered at a time when people needed them the most to carry their Covid patients to the hospitals. He further alleged that the ambulances were being used to transport sand.
Rudy, on Friday, had denied the allegations saying the ambulances were parked there due to lack of drivers. He even asked Pappu to provide drivers instead of playing politics over the issue. Rudy added that he had informed the Saran DM about the parked ambulances, besides issuing advertisements locally to mobilise rivers to run them.
Incidentally, Pappu, at a press conference in Patna on Saturday, presented 40 drivers with licences, saying Rudy could utilize their services to run the ambulances. He, in the same vein, also demanded that a case be lodged against Rudy by the state government under the Epidemic Act for keeping the ambulances purchased through the MPLAD fund immobilized, which is a wastage of government money.
Pappu took umbrage at the FIR lodged against him and demanded a probe into the irregularities committed by Rudy under the skill development programme of the Centre. Further, he asked about the training institute in Saran lying shut, even as it was meant to produce specially skilled and trained drivers.
Rudy had said the 30 ambulances purchased with the MPLAD fund and 20 others belonging to other organisations were parked at the VPCC campus, as the drivers had stopped turning up due to the Covid-19 pandemic. He also described the entry of Pappu as a “condemnable crime”.
As to the charge that he was doing politics amid the raging coronavirus pandemic, Pappu said “big persons” like PM Narendra Modi at present, along with former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and George Fernandes from the past, has also done politics.
He advised state health minister Mangal Pandey, who belongs to Siwan district, to arrange ICU, oxygen, Remdesivir injections and other essentials at the Siwan government hospital, that had been given only 40 Remdesivir injections though there were 100 patients there.