- A man in Madhya Pradesh pulls his ailing wife on a vegetable cart to the hospital
- The wife dies en route, highlighting severe gaps in emergency medical response
- The family had exhausted savings on treatment and lacked funds to secure help
A handcart is meant to carry vegetables, not a dying person, but on Saturday in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar, the same cart an elderly man pulls every day to earn a meal for his family became the only "ambulance" he had left.
The man Pawan Sahu doesn't have an education. He doesn't know the system, doesn't know whom to call, doesn't know how to "arrange" help.
When his wife's condition suddenly worsened, he did what desperation teaches the poor: he went door to door, folded hands, and begged neighbours to help him call an ambulance.
According to local accounts, no one even made a phone call.
Defeated, he lifted his ailing wife and laid her on the handcart where he usually stacks potatoes, tomatoes and seasonal greens. He began pulling it towards the hospital frantic, breathless, fighting time with his bare hands. But near Mata Madhiya, on the way, his wife breathed her last.
What remained on the road was not just a body on a cart. It was a brutal portrait of poverty of a society that looks away, and a system that often arrives only after it's too late.
Pawan Sahu is originally from Sesai village in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh. He has reportedly been living in Sagar for the past 10-12 years, surviving as a handcart vegetable vendor.
His wife had been ill for a long time. The family's savings, whatever little they had, had already been spent on treatment. When her condition worsened on Saturday, the family had neither money for private transport nor the knowledge or access to secure emergency help in time.
With no vehicle, no ambulance, and no one stepping forward, Pawan did the only thing he could: he turned his means of livelihood into a stretcher.
Witnesses say the moment his wife died, the elderly man broke down on the roadside completely shattered, unable to process that he had been running towards a hospital, yet losing her on the way. Many who saw the scene were moved to tears.
After the woman's death, a vehicle from Apna Seva Samiti, a local social service organisation, reportedly took the body to Naryawali Naka crematorium, where the last rites were performed.
Sagar CMHO Mamta Timori said the matter has come to her attention and an inquiry is underway to determine why the couple could not get an ambulance. She also said all possible assistance would be provided to the affected family.
