Traffic congestion due to PM’s visit may have caused 15-minute delay in reaching PGI, say police

After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apologised to Ambala resident Sumit Prakash Verma’s family and asked authorities to submit a report on the incident, the UT police are now retracing the route taken by the car which ferried the patient to the PGI.

On November 3, while the Prime Minister was on a visit to the PGI, Verma had died on his way to the Emergency block after he was allegedly denied entry by security personnel.

Upon questioning the car driver Sukhbir Singh, also a resident of Ambala, and reconstructing the incident, the police have found that traffic congestion due to the PM visit may have caused a delay of 15 minutes.

“The family started from a private hospital in the city at 11.30 am and finally entered the PGI at 12.05 pm. It usually takes 15 minutes for one to reach PGI from Sector 35 but delay was caused due to traffic congestion,” a police official said.

The report will be out in a day or two and will be sent to the PMO office, added the police officer.

The driver claimed that he had come from Matka Chowk, Sector 17, towards the PGI, but was stopped by the police at the Sector 11-12-14-15 roundabout, which forced him to drive down the wrong side of the road to enter the Panjab University campus from the Sector-15 side.

Thereafter, he reached the PGI gate on the varsity side, where cops refused to let him in.

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