Collision kills woman on Vellore trip

The passport carrying the picture of Beauty Rani Roy. Picture by Nantu Dey

Raiganj, Aug. 22: A woman from Bangladesh, who had just crossed the border with her family, died of injuries after a motorcycle hit the rickshaw-van she was travelling in near the Radhikapur checkpost yesterday.

Beauty Rani, 31, her husband Nirmal Roy and their two children had entered India with valid documents from Goalpara village in Bangladesh’s Dinajpur district around 3.30pm. They had planned to go to Vellore for a health check-up.

“We arrived in India through Radhikapur checkpost after clearing immigration and had hired a rickshaw-van to go to Dalimgaon to get a trekker for Kaliaganj, 12km away. We had planned to reach my sister-in-law’s house in Kushmandi, another 20km away. Suddenly a motorcycle coming from the opposite direction hit us and we fell on the road,” Nirmal said.

While Nirmal and the children fell on the soft ground, his wife flew into a pile of stone chips on the edge of the road and got injured on the head and chest.

“Local people rushed to our rescue and took us to the Kaliaganj rural hospital, where we were given first-aid. As my wife was being treated for her injuries, people from my sister-in-law’s house arrived at the hospital,” Nirmal, a farmer, said.

Around 8pm, when the doctors at the Kaliaganj hospital could not stop the bleeding of the woman, they asked the Roys to take her to the Raiganj district hospital.

“The doctors at the emergency ward of the district hospital asked us to immediately shift her to Siliguri. We hired an ambulance and set off. The vehicle hardly started moving when the ambulance attendance said my wife had passed away. We came back to Raiganj where the doctors pronounced her dead,” Nirmal said.

The Bangladeshi said the police helped them to get the post-mortem done quickly so that they could return home with the body tonight.

Beauty’s sister, Sona Roy, said the two children had been sent to her house in Kusmandi last night.

Nirmal started developing chest pains and doctors in Bangladesh’s Dinajpur had told him to consult a heart specialist. “My son, Kuasa, has also been suffering from convulsions. So I thought that we would visit Vellore to get our health checked and contacted my sister-in-law who has married and settled down in Kusmandi. They made all arrangements for us to visit south India.” His daughter, Rini, 12, was also accompanying them.

The Roys’ visas were valid from August 20 to September 29. “My wife would have been alive had we not travelled to India. I will never come back here to get treated,” Nirmal said.