Malegaon woman who lost her foetus in ambulance crash dies in Mumbai

Tankila Mustaq Ahmed, 35, who was eight months pregnant, was on her way to Sir JJ Hospital along with five other family members on Sunday morning

Two days after an ambulance bringing her to Mumbai for pregnancy complications crashed into a road divider in Thane, a Malegaon resident succumbed to her injuries on Tuesday.

The ambulance toppled after hitting a divider.

Tankila Mustaq Ahmed, 35, who was eight months pregnant, was on her way to Sir JJ Hospital along with five other family members on Sunday morning when the ambulance met with an accident in Anand Nagar. The stretcher fell on her stomach, leading to severe internal injuries, said doctors. She was taken to Rajawadi Hospital in Ghatkopar on Sunday morning and later shifted to Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Sion.

She lost her foetus when she reached the Sion hospital, said a casualty medical officer. “We performed a sonography and a foetal heart rate test, which showed that the foetus had died.” It was aborted on Monday night.

Her husband, Mustaq Ahmed, 40, who works as a daily wager in the handloom industry in Malegoan, said he was extremely disturbed. Waiting outside the hospital’s post mortem department, he said, “Our family has lost everything. I have not eaten anything for the last two days.”

Ahmed also suffered a gash on his right leg when the ambulance toppled after hitting a divider. The couple has three children — two boys, aged 8 and 12, and a 13-year-old daughter.

Tankila’s nephew Mohammed Shadab Shafik Ahmed Momin, 18, was also with the family when they were getting her to Mumbai in the ambulance. He said: “We hired a private ambulance for Rs15,000 to shift my aunt from Malegaon civil hospital to JJ Hospital. As we entered Thane, we slept off. We told the driver not to sleep at the wheel. Suddenly, the vehicle crashed into a divider and it toppled. We suffered minor injuries. We saw that my aunt was severely injured.”

Family members waiting at the hospital were angry to learn that the post-mortem was not conducted on Tuesday.

“They declared her dead at 11:30am, and the police registered the accidental death report only at 4:30,” Saeeda Ahmed, Tankila’s sister.

However, the police said they were waiting for case details from the trauma department to prepare a report. They police officials finally submitted the report to the post mortem department at 6:30pm, but by then the doctors who conduct the procedure had left.

“We can’t carry out the procedure before the report is submitted to us. The procedure will now be carried out tomorrow morning ,” said an administrative staff member from the postmortem centre. The family will take the body to Malegaon for the final rites after the post mortem.

S Korde, senior inspector of Kopri police station, said: “We got the hospital report about the woman’s death. We have now added a section to the case — 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code. We will arrest the driver, Shakur Rashid Baig, 56,after he is discharged from Sion hospital.”

The driver is also a resident of Malegaon.

(With inputs from Arvind Walmiki)