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Magistrate transferred for stopping ambulance, court orders probe
Amid raging controversy, the Jammu and Kashmir high court has transferred the traffic mobile magistrate, who is being accused of stopping an ambulance carrying a man who had suffered cardiac arrest.
Amid raging controversy, the Jammu and Kashmir high court has transferred the traffic mobile magistrate, who is being accused of stopping an ambulance carrying a man who had suffered cardiac arrest. The patient died allegedly because the magistrate kept the ambulance waiting for half an hour.
The court, which has also ordered a probe into the incident, transferred Sopore district traffic mobile magistrate Manzoor Ahmed Khan, and posted him as munsif mahanpur in Kathua district. The probe will be carried out by a sitting judge.
An FIR has also been lodged in the case.
The victim's family alleged that on December 10, Abdul Rehman Dar, a resident of Yansoo Handwara, died on the way to hospital when a mobile magistrate stopped the ambulance for half an hour. Ambulance driver Nazir Ahmad was stopped at Seelu Sopore, 55 km north of Srinagar.
Later, chief minister Omar Abdullah asked the administration to look into the matter. "Cannot believe the sheer bloody mindlessness of that action," the CM had posted on the micro-blogging website Twitter.
Langate MLA and president of the Awami Ittihaad Party (AIP) Engineer Rashid criticised a section of lawyers from Baramulla and Sopore for trying to "mislead the people" and "create confusion" over Dar's death.
Welcoming the decision of the high court to appoint a sitting judge to probe the incident, he appealed to the Bar Association to take full cognizance of the issue of a few colleagues taking to streets in Sopore, thus "making a humanitarian issue a political one."
Rashid expressed anger over the failure of the state government to take action against the traffic officials involved in breaking the green light of the ambulance and humiliating the people accompanying the patient.
"The chief minister cannot run away from the responsibility by simply passing the buck through tweets. He should have shown some morality and taken action against the traffic officials involved in the heinous crime," he alleged.
