Raveendran Nair, 59, couldn’t even dare to think that a visit to the hospital for a mild backpain checkup would leave him thirsty, hungry and suffocating inside a defunct lift for over 42 hours.
Raveendran, a local CPI leader and a staff member at the local legislators’ hostel, visited the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday morning for treatment of back pain. He was accompanied by his wife Sreelekha, who works at the hospital.
After an X-Ray, he was taking the lift to the doctor when it got stuck and was to remain so for the next almost two days.
“I pressed the alarm button, but there was no response,” he said. “There was no intercom to connect with the lift operator. Using my phone, I tried at several (helpline) numbers written inside the elevator. There was no response. Then the phone fell and stopped working.”
After this, he sat in one corner, hoping for someone to turn up. And then, another thought struck – it was Sunday the next day and he would likely be stuck there until the day after.
“I urinated in a corner. Sometimes, I would cry out loud. I couldn’t sleep. When I felt thirsty or hungry, I just licked my lips. I kept pressing the alarm bell regularly. Although the lift chamber had no fan or light, some air continued to waft in, ensuring a continuous supply of oxygen,” he said.
Eventually, he lost track of time. To keep up his morale, he recited the poems his wife wrote and published: “I knew them by heart.”
When he didn’t come home on Saturday, his family – Sreelekha and two college-going sons – thought nothing of it, putting it down to his irregular work shifts. But when he didn’t return on Sunday and they couldn’t get through to his phone, they began to worry.
Subsequent calls to the legislators’ hostel and the CPI office led them to discover that Raveendran had been missing since Saturday afternoon. By Sunday afternoon, they had registered a missing person’s report at the local police station and were frantically looking for him.
“They were in shock. They had searched the premises of the medical college, but never knew I was trapped in the elevator,” he said.
He was eventually rescued when a lift operator reported for duty on Monday morning. “According to norms, lift operators should bring down such elevators, open the doors and examine the chamber. But this didn’t happen on Saturday,” said an official.
Raveendran was admitted to the medical college hospital following the rescue. The state’s health department has ordered a probe into the incident and three people, including lift operators, have been suspended.
According to an official from the state health department, the problem with the lift wasn’t reported to the electrical wing and when Raveendran stepped into it, there was no sign to indicate that the elevator was faulty.
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