‘Cops did their job. I almost lost hope’

Noida: “We had almost given up hope. He is behind bars now and I'm happy about that,” said Shiv Nandan Pal.
Two weeks after an agonising train ride to Delhi from Patna after his daughter, final-year Btech student Sweety Kumari, sustained head injuries in a hit-and-run accident that sent her into coma, Pal hopes justice will be done.
“The police kept assuring us. On Sunday, they finally arrested the accused. They have done their job. All my concerns are for my daughter now. I want to see her happy and back home soon,” Pal said on Monday, a day after the driver of the Santro that hit Sweety, 45-year-old Gulab Singh, was arrested.
Ashirwad Mani Tripathi, Sweety’s friend and senior from her college Greater Noida Institute of Technology (GNIOT), said, “The struggle since the beginning, whether collecting funds for her treatment or pursuing the police case, was difficult. We are happy that the accused is in jail. The culprit must have assumed that he would roam freely as there were no leads and footage of the incident,” Tripathi said.
Friends have raised nearly Rs 30 lakh for Sweety's treatment, of which Rs 11 lakh was contributed by Noida police.
Karsoni Dong, who was with Sweety at the time of the accident and received minor injuries, asked why the world couldn't see the face of the man who had left her friend in that state. “His face should be shown to the public,” she said, referring to photos of Singh being paraded by police in a hood.
Sweety, who remains under neurosurgeons' watch at Kailash hospital in Greater Noida, has been showing steady progress. After regaining consciousness, she recognised her family and remembered her phone's password. She has also gradually started talking.