Spiritual leader dies in Malda car crash

Malda, April 20: A spiritual leader and four of his followers died today when the Tata Sumo they were travelling in collided with a bus on NH 34 near Naranpur.

Manindranath Goswami, the guru of Gutiasharif Ashram in South 24 Paraganas, was travelling with his disciples to attend a religious congregation in Darjeeling.

Three others, including a 14-year-old girl, sustained serious injuries. They have been admitted to the district hospital.

While Goswami (86) and Nirmal Biswas (50) died on the spot, Thakurdas Sikdar (42) and Amal Sarkar (28) passed away after being admitted to the district hospital.

As information of the accident reached the police control room, a highway patrol van arrived on the spot and rescued the victims. There were, however, no casualties among the bus passengers.

As news of the mishap spread, streams of devotees thronged the hospital demanding action against the driver of the bus.

The drivers of both the vehicles were arrested and the vehicles seized.

“The driver of the Sumo was found to be guilty. We are trying to ascertain if the driver was under the influence of liquor. The car was travelling at a high speed and it turned into a complete wreck from the impact of the collision,” said Swapan Dasgupta, the officer-in-charge of the Old Malda police station.

Goswami’s death has come as a shock to his disciples, many of whom held a demonstration in the hospital and gheraoed superintendent Maniklal Das in protest against the “negligence and poor medical care” in the hospital.

One of the demonstrators, Amal Mondal, said: “The condition of three people is critical. But they are not getting proper medical care. They have been kept lying on the floor, where they are being given oxygen and saline. Till 1 pm today, no doctor came to visit them to check their condition.”

Das, however, refuted these allegations and said there had been some trouble initially because no one was accompanying the injured. He assured Goswami’s disciples that proper care was being taken of those who had been admitted to the hospital. “The condition of all the accident victims is very critical. We are trying our best to give them proper treatment,” Das said.

The disciples then demanded that the body of their guru be released without post mortem.

Hospital authorities, however, said they could release his body only if his followers could obtain a written permission from the district magistrate.

The district magistrate declined to release the body without conducting a postmortem even after a group of 100 disciples met him.