Mohammad Noor Alam: ‘Nothing extraordinary.’ Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Mohammad Noor Alam is an ordinary man. The 50-year-old with a bushy white beard is just one of the many mechanics in Mullickbazar. On the best of days, he hardly makes Rs 100 before going to sleep on the pavement where he works. But on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, Alam sacrificed custom and did not bother about the consequences as he rushed to save two schoolgirls after a car crash.

The extraordinary act of compassion came following the pool car accident involving four students of Assembly of God Church School. Sucharita Dutta, 17, and Madhumonti Das, 14, suffered serious injuries and lay in the front seat, bleeding profusely, while the reckless driver fled.

“If a child is lying helpless, bleeding and crying out in pain, what is the most obvious thing to do? Go and help. I only did what my duty is towards another individual. It was nothing extraordinary,” protested Alam, when Metro tracked him down to Lohapatti, in Mullickbazar, on Friday.

Alam, whose wife and two sons live in Bihar, was seeking shelter from the sharp shower around 3pm on January 30 when he heard “a loud crash and the noise of glass shattering”. He rushed out to see an Ambassador mounted on the road divider with half the windscreen smashed.

“With the help of some shopkeepers, I pulled the four children out of the car. The two girls were bleeding badly. I pressed my hand on the forehead of one girl (Sucharita) to stop the bleeding but to no avail. Blood was also flowing from a cut under her chin. The other girl (Madhumonti), too, was bleeding and so I decided to rush them to hospital in a taxi,” recounted Alam. He left the hospital only after the doctors started treatment and the girls’ parents arrived.

Sucharita received 57 stitches on her face and Madhumonti 22, but Alam’s prompt intervention ensured that one could return home on the evening of the accident and other the evening after.

Didn’t he fear cop harassment or think about all the “flying customers” he would lose out on? “If all of us start thinking like that, so many people will lie on the streets and die,” said the Samaritan.