Kumaran’s School student

Surya V Kumar

ICU

auto driver

autorickshaw

Driver violated one-way rule, crashed intoriding a bicycle, and beat him up; tried to ‘kidnap’ boy, who jumped out, suffering head injuries, 16, landed in a hospital-- with three clots in the brain, two fractures in the skull and a bloodied mouth -- after a nightmarish encounter with anon August 19.Surya, a Std X student, was on his way to his school -- Kumaran’s near Tata Silk Farm -- on that Wednesday morning when he became a hapless victim of a sequence of events in which the auto driver pounded blows on him and later took off with the terrified boy in the auto forcing the latter to jump out from the moving vehicle.Surya has been advised bed rest. His parents said he has been complaining of severe headache on and off despite the treatment. The auto driver has been arrested.On August 19, around 8.05 am off Kanakapura Road near Yediyur Circle, R S Srinivasa rode his auto on the wrong side in a one-way street in which Surya was cycling -- in the legal direction -- to school. Srinivasa's auto knocked Surya's cycle over.The impact threw Surya off his bicycle, but the auto driver, frustrated at being unable to get away with the bicycle blocking his way, stepped out of theand started mercilessly slapping Surya, a Bengaluru district cricket player. Srinivasa had just jumped a traffic signal near Yediyur Circle opposite Vaibhav Hotel on Kanakapura Road and entered the one-way street from the wrong direction .The student, although shocked at being beaten up, pointed out to the auto driver that it was the latter’s mistake and had no right to be violent or even argue. That further agitated the auto driver who then began punching the crying boy in his face, bloodying his mouth and nose.Seeing the boy bleeding profusely, passersby and – in a rare show of opposition to their own fraternity – some autorickshaw drivers too came to Surya’s rescue and started beating up the accused Srinivasa.Empathising with Surya, the crowd egged him on to file a police complaint against the auto driver, hoping that the police would take stringent action against the violent auto driver Srinivasa.“My son who decided to file a complaint got into the accused’s auto and asked him to go to the police station. The moment Surya got into the auto, the accused sped away even before some others could get into the auto to accompany Surya. While driving in a rash and negligent manner, the accused threatened to kill my son and throw his body into the Yediyur Lake, blaming my son for all the ruckus. Fearing that he would be killed, Surya jumped out of the speeding auto and banged his head on the road in the process,” Surya’s mother R Chitra, an executive engineer with Namma Metro and a resident of Jayanagar 1st block, told Bangalore Mirror.Chitra learnt about her son being in a critical condition when some members of the public who admitted Surya to Bharathi Nursing Home in Basavanagudi telephoned her.Some members of the public who saw the errant auto driver driving off with an injured Surya, gave chase in their vehicles and witnessed the boy jumping out of the autorickshaw to sustain head injuries.“The members of the public, who were extremely proactive, had noted down the autorickshaw’s registration number and gave it to us. We approached the police and filed a complaint (with Basavanagudi police) against the accused driver,” Chitra said.As Surya’s condition was critical, Chitra and her husband Vinay Kumar, who is a senior executive in a tech MNC, shifted Surya to MS Ramaiah Hospital. He was treated there in the intensive care unit for almost 54 hours before being discharged on August 22.The Basavanagudi said they were able to trace the auto driver Srinivasa who had escaped after Surya had jumped out of his vehicle and had arrested him.His autorickshaw too has been seized.He has been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 506 (criminal intimidation). The Basavanagudi traffic police too have booked him for driving in the wrong direction on a one-way road.Surya was recently selected to represent the Bengaluru district under-16 cricket tournament and is now determined to get back into shape to represent his team.“My husband Vinay Kumar who works for IBM has worked abroad and knows the disciplined traffic approach in other countries. Since Surya started cycling, my husband has taught him the traffic rules. My son does not even jump the traffic signal even on his bicycle. We have been very particular not to allow our daughter to ride a moped until she reached 18 years of age. We just cannot believe that my son had to pay for obeying traffic rules,” Chitra said.