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Two decades of dedicated service by Bhavesh Patel have made sure the ‘dead’ don’t come alive on Mumbai’s railway stations. The activist who has been tirelessly working for rail accident victims and their families is responsible for a doctor certifying that a victim is dead. Until 2004, the station manager or a Government Railway Police (GRP) constable would certify an injured person’s medical condition. This unskilled evaluation often deprived victims of crucial medical assistance. Patel, 42, recounts a tragicomic episode when the body of a ‘deceased’ stirred while it was being taken out of the ambulance. “Terrified, the cops dropped the stretcher and ran,” he says.It’s one among several critical changes theadvisor has brought about. He has also ensured that victims are rushed to the nearest hospital within an hour of the accident, known as ‘golden hour’. The Bombay High Court’s order to this effect in 2004 was passed on Patel’s petition.As a college student who took the local from Dadar Station, Patel remembers seeing naked runover bodies lying on stretchers outside the ladies’ toilet, often unattended from morning to night. “The cops used to sell the shrouds and cover the bodies with newspapers,” he says cringing. The turning point came when he witnessed a commuter fall off a train. When he rushed to inform the GRP, they threatened to jail him for bothering them. “I went home in tears. My dad convinced me to make those who had made me cry, pay,” he says.Patel shot off a stream of letters to decisionmakers and spent hours every day at the Divisional Railway Manager’s office and various GRP stations, waiting only to be heard. “My plea was simple. At least in death, one deserves dignity,” he says, about his appeal to make shrouds compulsory. They did become mandatory, and the victory made Patel a famous face in the media. Yet, for a decade, he achieved only middling success.It took the tragedy of Jayabala Ashar for the railways to sit up. In 1998, on her way to a college exam, the 23-year-old was accosted by a drug addict on a Borivli-bound local. When she refused to part with her bag, she was hurled on the tracks and lost her limbs. The accident caused outrage. Patel took up the issue of her delayed hospitalisation with the then Railway Minister Ram Naik. “Stretchers were made mandatory at every station, and mortuaries were built at Dadar, Kurla and Thane stations. In 2003, I started the first helpline for railway victims, to dispense information to their families and facilitate immediate hospitalisation,” says Patel, who also built a fleet of 35 private ambulances that would be on stand-by around various stations.With a not-so-pretty picture being painted in the media, railway authorities suddenly asked Patel to pack up. “They said they’d take over my job. But they never did,” he sighs. Undeterred, Patel’s next initiative was to link BMC and staterun hospitals through a centralised information database that carried information on the injured and dead. This, too, wound up. Earlier this year, GRP Commissioner Prabhat Kumar acknowledged Patel’s contribution and launched Shodh, a website to help families locate accident victims. Patel is also the one to perform the last rites in case no relatives turn up to identify the deceased.“My work is not about making someone happy. I only try to lessen the blow of sadness,” he says. His bag of memories is packed with poignant ones. But the one that leaves him moist-eyed each time he narrates it, is about the time a grateful lady who begged to earn her living, came knocking at his door to hand over Rs 60, after Patel had arranged for a shroud to cover her son’s body.