Jharkhand air ambulance crash: Family took loans, exhausted savings for Rs 8 lakh medical flight

CHATRA: The family of businessman Sanjay Kumar, who was being flown to Delhi in an air ambulance that crashed in Chatra on Monday evening, had taken loans, borrowed from relatives, and exhausted their savings to arrange the Rs 8 lakh fee for the flight.

They believed that advanced treatment in Delhi would save his life, not knowing that the flight they hired with borrowed money and hope would not only be his but also the last journey of two of his family members. Sanjay’s family hails from Rakhat village under Chandwa police station of Latehar district.




“We arranged the money somehow. We believed the treatment in Delhi would give him a second chance. Instead, we lost three of our family members,” a relative said.

Incidentally, the crash at Karmatand forest under the Simaria police station of Chatra district wiped out an entire family’s hopes. Among the seven people killed were three family members — Sanjay, his wife Archana Devi, and their teenage nephew, Dhruv Kumar. Their native village has plunged into deep mourning after the incident.

Sanjay was helping with cooking at the roadside hotel that he ran jointly with his brother when a fire broke out on Feb 16. The fire, which broke out after a leak in the LPG cylinder, left him critically injured.

Following the Covid lockdown, their business has also been struggling, and Sanjay had to travel frequently between locations to manage operations and earn. Tragedy had also struck them before. In 2004, his father, who also ran a hotel, was allegedly killed by Maoists. After that incident, the family moved to the block headquarters of Chandwa, and Sanjay gradually took on the responsibility of supporting the household and managing the hotel.

After the fire incident, Sanjay was first admitted to a private hospital in Latehar and later referred to a hospital in Ranchi. As his condition deteriorated, doctors in Ranchi advised the family to shift him to Delhi for advanced treatment. The family then arranged to transfer him by an air ambulance.

Relatives said he worked tirelessly to stabilise the family financially after his father’s death. His elder brother, Vijay Saw, said Sanjay had rebuilt everything from scratch with great difficulty. “Now, my family is shattered again,” he said.

The crash left Sanjay’s two minor children — Shivam (13) and Shubham (17) — orphaned after they lost both their parents in a single night.

His elderly grandfather, Baleshwar Sahu, and other family members broke down at Chatra sadar hospital when the bodies were brought for the post-mortem. Sahu said the family had done everything possible for Sanjay’s recovery, taking a large loan to book the flight to take him to Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi.

A relative said Rs 6 lakh had initially been deposited for the flight fee. As the total cost was Rs 8 lakh, the remaining Rs 2 lakh was borrowed from a well-wisher in Latehar. “We did not know we were paying this amount for a journey of death,” the relative rued at the hospital.

Sanjay’s wife, Archana, was from a family living in a village of Chatra district’s sadar block.

Among the seven killed were three family members — Sanjay, his wife Archana Devi, and their teenage nephew, Dhruv Kumar