Santana Roy. Picture by Jahangir Badsa

A woman with an iron rod pierced in her chest had to travel 190km to reach Calcutta before she was treated in a hospital on Thursday.

The rod was taken out six hours after Santana Roy, 27, met with an accident in East Midnapore.

Santana, her husband Susanta, 30, and their three-year-old son were on their way to Mandarmoni when their vehicle collided with a small goods carriage in Marisda, around 160km from Calcutta. The accident occurred at 11.50am on the Digha-Calcutta highway.

A rod, about 15ft long and four inches in diameter, jutting out of the goods vehicle went through the windshield and hit Santana, who was in the back seat. It pierced her chest on the left. Her husband, son and the driver were unhurt.

Witnesses rushed to help. They brought cutters and snipped the rod on both sides, leaving only a 4ft section, said a friend of the Roys.

Santana was then taken to Contai Sub-divisional Hospital, around 15km away, but doctors there referred her to Calcutta, citing lack of infrastructure to conduct the surgery required to remove the rod. The Roys started for Calcutta at 12.30pm and reached SSKM Hospital at 5.10pm.

The surgery started at 6.30pm and was completed in an hour. “The rod had gone through the left part of her chest. There are fractures in the rib but it seems that the heart and lung did not suffer any serious injury,” said an SSKM official. Further investigations will be carried out on Friday.

Doctors said that there was not much bleeding. “A portion of the cloth of her kurta had gone inside her chest, along with the rod. This staunched the flow of blood,” said a doctor.

The Roys hail from Guwahati and had come to Calcutta to attend a friend’s wedding.