Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Kapurthala, May 31

Had it not been farmer Amrik Singh’s timely support and swift action, four-year-old Diksha could have lost her foot forever. A daughter of a daily wager, she was on Saturday riding in an auto-rickshaw in Brindpur village near the RCF when she met with an accident in which her foot was severed.

Amrik Singh, who happened to pass the road after working in his fields, saw a child’s shoe on the road and her severed foot just metres ahead. Vehicles were speeding down the busy Kapurthala-Sultanpur Lodhi road. He immediately picked up her foot and took it into his possession to save it from getting crushed by vehicles. He went home (which was just a few metres away), brought back his car, took along the girl and her two relatives and in 25 minutes reached a private hospital in Jalandhar for surgery.

In the hospital, he made an advance payment of Rs 75,000 so that the medical procedure could be started at the earliest. While the accident took place at 11.25 am, the girl was rushed to hospital before noon. The surgery went on for six hours after which the doctors told the family that it went on well and the chances of a good recovery were bright.

As her mother Sonia looks back at the two-day-old incident, she recalls, “Had it not been for the help of Amrik Singh, we would have been ruined.” She narrated the whole incident, “My uncle has expired. All my family members, including my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law and their children, were riding in an auto-rickshaw driven by my father-in-law when a truck coming from the opposite side passed by. Diksha was in my lap. Maybe her foot was hanging outside the auto that it got snapped and Diksha fell off it. We stopped and saw her sitting on the road by herself and thought she was safe. Our effort was more on stopping the trucker and taking on him, not realising what had actually happened. At this stage, Amrik Singh approached us with her foot in his hand. He drove my daughter and my mother-in-law to Jalandhar hospital in his car. By the time we followed him in the auto, the surgery had already started and he had already paid half the expenses.”

Sonia says: “The only thing that worries me now is that the doctors have said that the cost of surgery is Rs 2 lakh and we need to pay another Rs 1.25 lakh. We have been told that the Ayushman card cannot be used for this treatment. So, we really do not know how things will work out.”