A father visiting RG Kar Hospital for the treatment of his four-year-old son’s fractured arm was crushed between the doors of an automatic lift that allegedly dragged him up and down repeatedly, with a part of his body outside, early on Friday morning.
Police said the preliminary postmortem on 41-year-old Arup Banerjee had attributed the death to “poly trauma (compression of chest wall, rupture of heart, lungs and liver, fracture of legs, hands, ribs) ante-mortem in nature”.
Hospital officials said there was no operator in the lift at the time.
Liftmen Milan Kumar Das, 49, Biswanath Das, 48, and Manas Kumar Guha, 55, and security personnel Ashrafal Rahaman, 31, and Subhadip Das, 24, were arrested late on Friday night on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Arup, a resident of 122 Jawpur Road in Nagerbazar, had arrived at RG Kar on Thursday night with son Ayush, who was to undergo surgery early on Friday morning.
As is the practice in some of Bengal’s miserable state-run hospitals — even a prestigious medical college like RG Kar — the boy’s parents had the responsibility of taking him up to the operating theatre.
CCTV footage shows the family taking the lift from the first floor of the trauma care building around 4.15am, said Saptarshi Chatterjee, the RG Kar medical superintendent-cum-vice-principal.
“There is footage of the man (Arup) being taken for treatment around 5.12am. He was still alive. He died of his injuries some time later,” Chatterjee said.
Arup’s uncle Prabir Banerjee alleged there was no signage declaring the lift was “malfunctioning”, nor was there anyone to warn the family against using that particular lift.
“Preliminary findings suggested that Arup Banerjee had entered the lift with his wife and son from the first floor. They were going to the upper floor,” Chatterjee said.
“But instead of going up, the lift started moving downwards. The family panicked. It appears that the man tried to get out of the lift when the lift reached the basement. But he got stuck, either between the lift doors or the lift and the wall. This caused the maximum injuries.”
Arup had tried to get out apparently after the lift got stuck in the basement for sometime. The screams of his wife and son brought several people running. One of them was Arup’s father Amal.
“Footage shows that the father of the deceased man was trying hard to pull his son and the other family members from inside the lift out to the basement,” Chatterjee said.
“Arup Banerjee, his wife and son were together in the lift when this happened. We could rescue the wife and son, but not the man.”
Arup’s sister Arpita said the lift had moved “up and down” multiple times with her brother stuck between the doors.
Chatterjee said the PWD (electrical), CISF and the police would submit reports to the hospital, based on which he would send a final report to Swasthya Bhavan on Monday.
A senior health department official said a lift operator should have been present.
“We have sought a report from the PWD. The chief electrical engineer has been asked to conduct an inquiry and submit the report,” the official said.
Chatterjee said lifts will from now on not run without an operator. “Notices will be put up in the lifts instructing people not to use them in the absence of an operator,” he said.
He added that the hospital has 32 lifts and that arrangements are being made, in coordination with the PWD’s electrical department, to ensure operators are stationed inside each lift. A Swasthya Bhavan directive is expected to formalise the measure.
Arup’s son was operated on and said to be “stable”. His wife has suffered minor injuries to her chin, a hospital official said.
The police said they were investigating the role of the company that maintains the lifts.
One of the owners of the company that installed the three lifts in the trauma care building and was responsible for their maintenance told this newspaper that the lift was in “perfect condition”.
“Had it developed a snag, it would not have operated at all. There is no question of malfunctioning,” he said, declining to be identified.
He said company engineers had visited the spot after the incident.
The police case was started “based on a written complaint by the father of the deceased person”, joint commissioner (crime) Rupesh Kumar said.
The homicide wing of the detective department took over the case late on Friday night.