Brain dead child prompts Hyderabad to ask for stricter traffic laws

The news from inside the Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit of Care Hospital in Hyderabad is grim. Since Friday evening, nine-year-old Ramya who was the victim of a freak accident, has been kept on ventilator.

Doctors say that on Monday morning, her condition worsened and the brain stem reflexes were found to be absent. 

Ramya and her family were returning home to Banjara Hills in the western part of Hyderabad around 4.30 pm on Friday when a car from the other side of the road lost control, hit the divider and crashed on top of the car in which the family was travelling.

Ramya's uncle, Rajesh - a 35-year-old software professional who was to leave for the US on Sunday and his two-year-old son died on the spot. Ramya's mother, grandfather and another uncle too suffered injuries. 

Ramya's mother, Radhika apparently does not know of the child’s condition.

Struggling to cope with Rajesh and his son's tragic death, the family is unable to come to terms with Ramya's state.

The happy family photograph is a sad reminder of happy times. 

None of this would have happened had the six boys in the car been responsible.

All of them - first year engineering students at a Hyderabad colleage - were drunk.

The driver, 20-year-old Shravil, did not even have a driving license. Not that it would have mattered given that he was inebriated and not in a condition to drive the car.

He is now in police custody, booked under section 304 B (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). 

For the last four years, Mohammed Khaleequr Rahman has been going from college to college in Hyderabad to talk to students about the dangers of speed driving and drunken driving.

Rahman started the NGO `Youth against Speed' after his son, 16-year-old son, Ajmal and cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin's 19-year-old son, Ayazuddin, died while overspeeding on a superbike in September 2011.

Rahman also travels around at night in the city to check on roads where bike racing is common to meet bikers.

“The boys don't take me seriously, they humiliate me, asking `Who are you Uncle to teach us?'. But then when I tell them Ajmal and Ayaz's story, they mellow down,'' says Rahman.

The NGO has made some 20000 youth take a pledge against speed and drunken driving, but clearly it is not enough. An indication of irresponsibility on the road is that in the first six months of 2016, Hyderabad traffic police has booked 7700 cases of drunken driving. 

Shocked by Rajesh's death and Ramya's condition, Hyderabad citizens are advocating aggressive advertising against drunken driving in the city. The traffic police plans to intensify their drive against drunken driving, which are at the moment, confined more to the last three evenings of the week.