Madurai: Drunken man mows down hotel guard, held

Madurai: The hotel guard mowed down by a medical representative drinking and driving out of a posh hotel here remains critical in the ICU of the Apollo Hospital, where the doctors have laboured hard to keep him alive despite heavy loss of blood and the amputation of his battered left leg.

Video clips from the CCTV footage of Hotel Fortune Pandian show a motorcycle arrive outside the gate shortly after 2 am on Sunday morning (night of November 9) and security guard P. Vijaykumar walking down the driveway to check out. After verifying the biker's credentials, the guard was just opening the gates when a car driven at high speed from inside the hotel hit him from behind, crashed through the gate and disappeared into the night after swerving sharply left.

The video, as well as the shocked eyewitnesses, confirmed that the poor guy was dragged several metres down the road by the car and left bleeding. Rushed to Apollo in a critical condition, the 55-year-old guard was first resuscitated from a near-death by a team of doctors and paramedics and went through a complicated surgical procedure that began at 9 am and took a long time to be completed. At the end of the procedure, his left leg had to be amputated.

"He was a strong man; otherwise survival would have been impossible considering the heavy blood loss and the terrible trauma. Both the legs were badly smashed up. We managed to save the right leg but the left one had to be taken off to save his life", said a doctor requesting anonymity.

With severe cut injuries all over and a pelvic fracture, Vijaykumar continued to hover between life and death for long. He suffered cardiac arrest on Wednesday night and again, the alert doctors saved the man. He remains on the ventilator.

"The terrible injuries and the heavy loss of blood cause concern, but he will come out of this; we are confident because he is strong and otherwise healthy. He responds to our commands and even today, the police came and told him not to worry and the driver of the car has been arrested", said another doctor.

The driver, it turned out, was M Devanathan, 38, a medical representative working for a well-known pharmaceutical company. He allegedly had one too many at the party hosted by his company for some doctors in the city and was among the last to leave.

"The CCTV footage from the hotel showed him prominent among the last few staff members of the pharma company. We could identify him driving out in his car. He abandoned the vehicle after some distance and disappeared. We secured him later", Madurai Commissioner of Police S Davidson Devasirvatham told DC.

The accused, however, came out on bail the very next day.