A champion police archer has survived after sitting, arms folded, through a two-hour wait for an ambulance with an arrow piercing his lungs, food pipe and the main artery that pumps blood from the heart to the other organs.

Bapan Barman, 32, had been accidentally struck by a colleague's arrow through his left arm when he was at the target board to check his shot during a practice session in Cossipore on January 15.

The constable, a gold medal winner in the 50-metre archery competition of the All-India Police Meet in Haryana in 2012, underwent a complicated surgery at Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals and has since recuperated enough to recount how his only objective through the ordeal was to be as still as possible so that he wouldn't bleed internally.

"I was scared to change my posture for fear of the arrow breaking inside my body. So I sat with my arms folded around my chest for two hours, waiting for the police ambulance to arrive and take me to the hospital," Bapan told Metro on Tuesday, seated on a wheelchair with his chest bandaged.

In the time that the ambulance took to reach the Cossipore archery ground, Bapan, who is attached to the fourth battalion of Calcutta police, kept thinking about his wife and family and willed himself to live for them.

Some of his colleagues wanted to try and pull the arrow out but he asked them not to attempt any such thing. "When the arrow struck me, I had fallen on the ground but sat up immediately. Part of the arrow that was outside broke and I knew that if someone tried to pull it out, it could break into more pieces inside," he said.

When the ambulance arrived, Bapan climbed into it without moving his torso.

"I could feel the arrow inside me, although there was little pain. I asked the driver go slowly so that my body didn't move. When the ambulance went over a few bumps along the way, I felt the pain and got even more scared," Bapan recalled.

As if he hadn't been tormented enough already, the police ambulance ran out of fuel midway through the journey to Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals, around 7km from Cossipore. Someone called for another vehicle but Bapan refused to alight. "I asked them to get the ambulance refuelled. My only thought then was to stay alive somehow," he said.

At Apollo, cardiothoracic surgeon Suraj Pradhan took one look and knew he would have to manage an extremely difficult surgery. "We had to administer anaesthesia with the patient seated because he feared it would endanger his life if he lay down," he said.

On cutting open Bapan's chest, Pradhan discovered that the arrow had pierced several vital organs. When he felt the aorta, it started to bleed. "We had to stop his blood circulation because the patient could otherwise have bled to death during surgery. He was put on a heart-lung machine to make his vital organs function artificially," the surgeon said.

Pradhan and his team cut the arrow piece by piece to bring it out.

The injury caused accumulation of fluid in Bapan's lungs and interventional radiologist Usha Goenka was brought in to drain it out.

The lungs and aorta were repaired during the surgery, but two holes - the first 1.5cm in diameter and the other 2.5cm - remained in the food pipe.

"He couldn't eat because food would come out from the hole. Also, there was secretion of saliva and that can cause infection if it gets into the body's system," said Mahesh Goenka, director of the Apollo Gleneagles Institute of Gastrosciences.

Goenka used an endoscopic contraption called Ovesco Clip to close the two holes a few days after the first surgery. A stent was used to cover the food pipe.

Bapan is now able to eat and even had meat for lunch on Monday. By Tuesday, be could move about on a wheelchair and flash the occasional smile at visitors. He still speaks in a low voice and has some pain, but said he was feeling much better with his wife by his side.

Bapan has always been serious about fitness and that too played a role in his recovery. Before joining the police, he used to run a gym in his native Mathabhanga, in Cooch Behar district. His younger brother took over after he came to Calcutta.

Doctors say Bapan, who was to leave for Nagaland on January 16 to compete in the police games, was lucky that the arrow itself acted as a plug against excessive bleeding. "He should be able to get back to normal life in three to four months," Goenka said.

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