60-yr-old dies of cardiac arrest after 3 hrs in LPG queue

Bathinda: A 60-year-old man died of cardiac arrest after standing in an LPG queue for three hours in Sehna of Punjab's Barnala district on Friday.

Bhushan Kumar was serial number 25 among 125 customers and had queued up at 5am. At 7.50am, he collapsed. He was taken to hospital but died on the way. This is the first such death in Punjab since the energy crisis began.


Residents of Sehna, around 20km from Barnala, had started assembling at the gas agency well before 5am though it had announced that it would open its doors at 8am. Bhushan was among the first.

In less than three hours, at least 125 people had taken their tokens. Anxiety levels were already high when agency representatives announced they were increasing the gap for refill of cylinders to 45 days, said some of those in queue.

"Till yesterday we were told that cylinders will be supplied to customers after 25-30 days but today the agency said that the cylinders will be provided after a wait of 45 days," said Jagga Singh, who was serial number 3.

"I had come at 4.30am and Bhushan arrived at 5am. All of a sudden, he collapsed. We were shocked. We rushed to help him, but he breathed his last when we were taking him to hospital," Jagga said, still shaken by the tragedy.

Barnala deputy commissioner Harpreet Singh said: "It's very unfortunate that a person died while waiting to get LPG supplies. I have asked for an inquiry by the civil supplies department to see if there was any discrepancy in the number of days in between providing supplies. It will be seen if some compensation can be provided to the bereaved family."

Police will look into the circumstances leading to Bhushan's death, Barnala SSP Sarfaraz Alam said, calling it unfortunate, but a natural death

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