Nagpur: In what could be described as sheer apathy, the Jet Airlines officials in Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagpur Airport restrained a patient (who was being rushed to Mumbai for an operation) from boarding the flight on November 1, 2016.
According to the family members of the patient, the youngest of three brothers identified as Kishore Dewangan aged 36 years and a resident of Bhillai was ailing from some stomach ailment. The Doctor whom the family members of Kishore Dewangan consulted had advised them to rush him to Mumbai for an operation. For reasons best known to the Doctor, he had opined that this operation is not possible in Bhillai or even Nagpur.
So the two elder brothers of Kishore Dewangan procured a plane ticket from Nagpur to Mumbai in Jet Airways. They rushed to Nagpur somehow and reached the Airport too. They showed the tickets to the Jet Airways counter and were issued the boarding passes too.
However, the elder brothers innocently had requested for a wheel chair for their ailing brother. The personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways had allegedly said that the brother looks fine and can walk so why do they need a wheel chair.
At this the elder brothers had again innocently shown the medical file to the personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways.
They had allegedly told the brothers that they will have to speak with their doctor and only then will they be allowed to board the aircraft. The Doctor of Jet Airways had allegedly told the personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways that the patient cannot or should not be allowed to board the flight since it could be dangerous for him. The personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways then spoke to the Doctor in Bhillai. He too had allegedly told the Jet Airlines personnel not to allow him to board the flight. The personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways then asked the elder brothers of Kishore Dewangan to go to Bhillai and get a letter which permit Kishore to travel by flight.
Either the personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways do not know how far Bhillai is or they were simply not bothered about the feasibility of acquiring such a certificate from their Doctor in Bhillai. One more reason could be that they did not want to provide a wheelchair facility to the patient.
The elder brothers pleaded with the personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways to allow them to fly on humanitarian grounds, but they did not relent and off-loaded them. In another act of adding salt to their injuries, the personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways had allegedly said that they have cancelled their tickets but they would get reimbursement only from Bhillai where they had procured the tickets. The brothers ran from pillar to post, but the airlines personnel did not relent. Finally the brothers were told that the flight has already taken off.
The brothers have since rushed to the Railway station to board the Duranto Express to Mumbai so that they can reach Mumbai in the next 12 hours.
However, the state of the patient Kishore Dewangan could turn to be critical and anything could happen to him enroute to Mumbai by train. Who would or should be held responsible if something untoward happens to Kishore? Should the personnel manning the counter of Jet Airways be held responsible for any untoward incident occurring with Kishore?
Poor services too! Goods gets stolen from baggage too
While the brothers were running from pillar to post, they saw a foreigner who was visiting the city come to the counter with his baggage. The baggage showed how someone had neatly cut into the luggage to steal something from his bag. The irony is that the personnel manning the counter simply said that someone has sliced into his bag, and that they do not know if it was at this end or at the starting airpost where the foreigner had boarded the flight. All that the Jet Airlines personnel had to say to the foreigner was that they’ll investigate and find out. It was unclear of what was stolen from his baggage.
