When Javed stopped near Nair hospital to repair the fare meter of his vehicle, he saw the bird, whose condition was so bad that death seemed imminent. Shocked to know that it had been lying there for two days, he immediately stood guard over the creature, which had been pelted with stones by passers-by, and made frantic efforts to call the Society for Prevention of Cruelty against Animals (SPCA) hospital at Parel.

His shock turned to incredulity when the hospital authorities told him they didn't have an ambulance to spare. ``After spending nearly Rs 40 on phone calls and threatening the hospital that I would go to the press, they asked me to put it in a cardboard box and bring it over,'' he said.

Javed then took the bird to the hospital in theafternoon. Thoroughly drenched in the rains, the bird was given a tranquiliser by the hospital staff, and was kept under observation.

The residents of the locality adjacent to Nair hospital also claimed to have phoned the SPCA after they saw the vulture near the garbage dump. ``But the SPCA officials asked for Rs 200 to come and take the bird away. After that, we decided not to involve ourselves in the matter,'' said Dinesh Gupta, who runs a grocery store nearby.

Though the director of the hospital couldn't be contacted, SPCA officials claimed that since the ambulance moved around in the city, it was nearly impossible for it to get to a spot in time. ``We can assure the animals medical treatment, but getting an ambulance will prove more difficult,'' they added.