A four-and-a-half-year-old boy sitting in the rear seat of an autorickshaw had a portion of his right little finger ripped off when the driver’s help in a pick-up van that had stopped at a signal opened the left door and the auto crashed into it.
Nirban Banik, the injured child, was returning home to Kasba ub south Kolkata from school with his younger brother and mother when the accident happened on the Rashbehari connector around 12.30pm on Thursday.
The Nursery student underwent a re-implant surgery a few hours later. He was rushed to Ruby General Hospital and then to Belle Vue Clinic, where he underwent the procedure.
His father told The Telegraph that the severed part of his little finger fell on the rear seat of the auto and his mother held on to it.
“The boys were travelling with their mother like on other days. Nirban and his younger brother, who is two-and-a-half-years old, and my wife were on the rear seat. Nirban was taken to Ruby hospital in the same auto in which they were travelling. But the hospital said they did not have the facility for the surgery. So we shifted him to Belle Vue,” Mithun Banik, the child’s father, said.
An official at Ruby hospital said the child’s mother brought him along with the chopped-off portion of the finger.
“The child was stable and conscious,” the official said. Officials at Belle Vue said a team comprising Rajan Tondon and Akhilesh Agarwal re-implanted the right little finger.
“The surgery went off well. The doctors will be able to tell in five or six days whether the injured finger will function normally,” said an official of Belle Vue.
The police said the pick-up van — a Tata Ace — had been impounded and the driver and the help detained.
Nirban’s father said he had “no grudge” against the auto driver. “But I will certainly lodge a complaint against the driver and the help of the Tata Ace,” Banik said.
Accidents caused by recklessly driven autos and smallgoods vehicles are not uncommon in the city.
“The helper (of the Tata Ace) should not have opened the left door without checking. At the same time, since the Tata Ace was stationary at the signal, the auto, which was trailing the vehicle, should have been moving at a slower speed,” said an officer.