Innocence in Coma: A young guy hit by US embassy vehicle battles for life
Left to die after being hit by embassy vehicle, Sunny desperately clings to life under coma as his family members fight for their honor
By Anand Gurung
With tubes and needles attached to his wrist and various parts of his frail body and nurses regularly checking on him, Sunny Nakarmi, 20, is struggling between life and death at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Blue Cross Hospital in Tripureshwor, Kathmandu after he was hit by a U.S embassy vehicle just a day ahead of Holi festival on March 9.
Doctors involved in Sunny’s treatment say he immediately slipped into a coma after suffering a serious brain injury in the accident and has been bed-bound for the last three weeks.
For more than 18 days he was under ventilator support due to acute respiratory failure, the doctors say, but now it has been removed and he is breathing normally.
Dr Ashish Shah, one of many doctors attending Sunny, said the young lad has passed the critical stage and that his bodily functions is gradually becoming normal. But that’s just about it.
“I can’t really say for sure when he will come out of coma or even if he ever will,” Dr Shah said. “His half closed eyes sometimes respond, but his body is simply unable to make any voluntary movement.”
According to the doctor, Sunny suffers regular seizures; otherwise he remains in an immobile state all the time.
“He is as we call it in a vegetative state,” he said. “It is highly unlikely that he will now lead a normal life, but let’s hope for the best and pray for this young man.”
Sunny, an undergraduate student from Ace Management College, was seriously injured when his motorbike was hit by a vehicle driven by Jennifer L. Kar, an employee at the US embassy in Kathmandu, at around 9 pm, near Jai Nepal Cinema Hall. He was returning home to old Baneshwor after meeting with his friend.
His family members claim this is clearly a hit and run case, and quoted a police official, who was the only witness to the accident, as saying that the vehicle with the blue license plate and having registration no 61 CD 25 (blue license plate are driven by the diplomatic community) immediately fled from the scene after hitting Sunny.
The policeman, Inspector Bam Dev Gautam, who witnessed the accident first hand, told a leading daily that the vehicle immediately sped away after hitting the motorcycle, and that only after he reported the accident on his walkie-talkie, that it was caught in Durbar Marg, few hundred meters from the scene of the accident.
Embassy officials arrived at the Durbar Marg police station shortly after the vehicle with its driver – later identified as Jennifer L. Kar through the license the police seized from her at that time - was taken under control. As is usual in accidents involving vehicles, the Traffic Police took over the case.
Meanwhile, police rushed the gravely injured Sunny to Bir Hospital.
“But since there were no beds at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, we took him to Blue Cross Nursing Home,” Suresh Nakarmi, Sunny’s elder brother, said remembering that fateful night.
Suresh said in the days after that they met few US embassy officials, but Jennifer, who was involved in the accident, never turned up. And despite their requests, they weren’t allowed to meet her or neither anyone from the embassy visited Sunny at the hospital to learn about his condition.
Kishore Pradhan, one of the US embassy officials they met during the period, took the responsibility of the accident, assured them that the US embassy will meet all the medical costs and provide appropriate compensation also. Only after this, the Traffic Police returned the vehicle to the embassy.
“But later they tried to wash their hands off the case by making various excuses like, for instance, saying that this is an official matter and they have to first hear from Washington DC before doing anything in this regard,” Suresh said in an agitated tone. “They remained out of touch for another two weeks. We tried to contact them, but to no avail. After it simply became unbearable, we went to the embassy. At first they altogether denied that anyone with the name Jennifer works at the embassy. But after we kept on with our demand that the embassy should bear all the medical costs, they said we can go anywhere or do whatever we like and that it is none of their concern.”
Unable to bear the mounting medical costs – according to family members the hospital bill alone has come to Rs 600,000 with more than Rs 20,000 per day in medical bills and other hospital expenses– the victim’s kin took the case to the Foreign Ministry hoping something might come up with it. But Keshav Khatri, who is Sunny’s cousin brother, said they received little help from there also as the ministry officials were reluctant to take up their case after learning that it involved US embassy and kept making various excuses not to meet them.
The victim’s family members then went to National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), but the officials there said that since it is a case involving a diplomatic official, it clearly falls out of their jurisdiction. They, however, agreed to file a complaint case.
On Wednesday, 23 days after the case got much media hype with most of the television stations and major dailies covering the story, the US Embassy issued a “news release” under the title “Motorcyclist Crashes into Embassy Vehicle” in which it claimed that its employee was not at fault in the accident.
In the statement the US embassy said, “On March 9, at a police checkpoint near the Chinese Embassy, a motorcyclist attempted to avoid the police line, lost control of his motorcycle, and crashed into a vehicle driven by a U.S. Embassy employee.”
It further said that the police already at the checkpoint witnessed the motorcyclist’s crash.
A police report of the accident was immediately filed. No charges were filed nor detentions made because the accident was clearly the fault of the motorcyclist evading the police, the release said.
Extending best wishes for a “speedy recovery” to the injured motorcyclist, the US embassy said that its staff, including the driver of the vehicle hit by the motorcyclist, “have acted, and continue to act in full accordance with all Nepali laws and cooperated fully with the Nepal Police at every stage.”
According to Transportation Act 1990, if a vehicle hits a person resulting in the death of the latter, then the driver of that vehicle (or its owner) will have to pay a maximum of Rs 300,000 in compensation and 17,000 in funeral expenses. If the victim is injured, then the vehicle owner has to bear all the medical cost of the victim, sometimes, in the case of critical injury, for his whole life.
Similarly, if the vehicle’s driver runs away from the scene of the accident without attending to the victim (or doing something to take him to the hospital), then a prima facie case may be lodged against the driver which assumes that he or she was clearly at fault.
Holding a press conference at the Blue Cross Hospital Tuesday, relatives of Sunny accused the embassy and its employees of acting ‘irresponsibly’ towards the victim.
Suresh said that their father, who was sick from a long time, also died three days ago after being unable to bear what had happened to his son. Sunny used to mostly take care of his sickly father.
Including elder brother Suresh, Sunny’s mother and two sisters can’t be at the hospital as the strict mourning rules require them to stay in their house for 13 days.
Reacting to the embassy statement, Suresh said, “Even if for the time being we assume that what the embassy is saying is true and that the driver was not at fault, I still want to ask why she fled instead of attending to my brother.”
According to Suresh, his brother was left lying on road for half an hour after the US embassy official’s vehicle hit him and that if he had been rushed to the hospital immediately after the accident it would have made a big difference.
“But she just ran away from there. Didn’t she even have a little bit of humanity left inside her?”
Source: nepalnews.com Apr 02 09
