Sheikh Rezak. Picture courtesy STAR Ananda

A steel shaft pierced Sheikh Rezak’s chest and emerged through his back during a car crash on Wednesday morning. The gritty 21-year-old bore the pain and walked into Medical College and Hospital a couple of hours later.

The shaft was removed after another two hours, following a “rare and difficult” surgery conducted by a team of seven doctors.

Mrityunjay Mukherjee, the head of the department of surgery, said: “The steel shaft was 5.5ft long, 1.5inch wide and 5mm thick. It had pierced his right upper arm and entered the thoracic cavity through the armpit, coming out of his back. The wounds have been sutured and he is now stable.”

Cutting the shaft proved a challenge. “Usually we use a gas-cutter to cut away portions of the rod outside the body. But the shaft had perforated a part of Rezak’s right lung. Steel being a good conductor of heat, the lungs and other organs might have been charred had we used a gas-cutter,” said Siddharth Mukherjee, an assistant professor in the cardio-thoracic department.

“The damage to the lung has been repaired,” said Mukherjee.

Rezak, a resident of Arambagh, was driving a Tata Sumo to Calcutta amidst dense fog when he rammed into a truck coming from the opposite direction on National Highway 26, at Shiakhala.

A steel shaft broke off the front of the truck, smashed the car’s windscreen and pierced Rezak’s body. Brother Rajak, seated next to Rezak, escaped with minor injuries.

“Rezak was first taken to a nursing home nearby but it did not have the facilities to remove the shaft. He was referred to Medical College and Hospital, where he was taken in an ambulance around 9.15 am,” said Rezak’s uncle Abdul Malik.

Harekrishna Chanda, the deputy superintendent of Medical College, said: “The youth has exemplary stamina which saved him. Despite the pain, he walked to the OT from the ambulance.”