SILCHAR / GUWAHATI: A patient identified as Rasoraj Chakraborty died at Silchar Medical College Hospital on Thursday morning after the ambulance in which he was being rushed for treatment was stopped on Wednesday to make way for the convoy of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma during the Chief Minister’s visit to the city.
According to reports, the ambulance was held up as part of traffic arrangements for the VIP movement. The delay occurred while the patient was being transported in what family members and local accounts described as a critical condition. He succumbed the following morning at the hospital.
The Chief Minister later apologised to the patient’s family, describing the stoppage of the ambulance as unacceptable. He directed officials to conduct an inquiry into the episode and ordered action against those responsible. Four police personnel who had been deployed in the area were subsequently suspended.
The sequence of events has brought into sharp focus the systemic practice of clearing roads and holding up ordinary traffic including emergency vehicles for political convoys. In a state where medical emergencies often require rapid movement across congested towns, the decision to prioritise an official motorcade over an ambulance has been widely viewed as a failure of both protocol and basic administrative judgement.
Critics have pointed out that while the Chief Minister moved quickly to apologise and suspend lower-level personnel, the deeper problem lies in a security and traffic culture that treats VIP movement as non-negotiable and the needs of ordinary citizens especially the critically ill as secondary. The suspension of four policemen, while an administrative response, has done little to address questions about why ambulance movement was interrupted in the first place and whether standard operating procedures adequately protect emergency vehicles from such delays.
The death of Rasoraj Chakraborty has thus become more than an isolated tragedy. It has highlighted a recurring institutional shortcoming: the willingness of the system to sacrifice precious minutes of emergency care so that a convoy may pass uninterrupted. For the family of the deceased, those minutes proved irreversible.