Compensation has been paid, but will it bring our sons back?: father of deceased Osmania medical student

In the last few weeks, Srinivas Murthy has spent his nights lying awake, unable to cope with the death of his son in a tragic accident slightly over a month ago.

“We always had a routine. We would sleep early and wake up early. Now, we are unable to sleep until 4 am. I even get headache thinking of this loss. We are managing with sleeping pills, but we’re worried about becoming dependent on them,” says Srinivas Murthy.

Fifty-seven-year-old Murthy lost his son Pranay in a tragic accident on March 14. Pranay had attended a sports meet at KIMS Amalapuram medical college along with 46 others. They had engaged a private bus to take them back to college and the bus met with an accident around midnight, killing five people, four of them students. Police say the accident occurred due to the alleged negligence of the driver who was inebriated.

Pranay obtained a rank of 128 in the entrance exams and got admission in Osmania Medical College. “We always dreamed of having a doctor in the family. He was in his fourth year, he was almost ready but it’s our bad luck that we lost him. We lost our brilliant son. In fact, with him we lost everything,” an inconsolable Murthy said.

Pranay’s loss hit them hard, but was made worse because the family was to celebrate later that week, as his older brother Jawahar had just returned from the US after completing his studies and was embarking on a career. “We were very happy as he was back after two years and we were planning to celebrate with our family. Although we feel very lonely, we cannot ask our elder son to stay with us, we do not want to hinder his career,” Murthy says in tears. Jawahar also has to repay a loan of Rs 25 lakh which funded his studies.

 “When Pranay got a seat in Osmania Medical College we were very happy as it is a reputed college. But now I feel that this is only in name, as the maintenance of the college is very bad. It doesn’t even have proper transport for the students. It has only three buses which are rusting in the garage and they had to book private buses,” says Murthy.

On March 31, he wrote a letter to the CM requesting ex-gratia payment to the families of the deceased. The minutes of an emergency meeting held that day proposed an ex-gratia payment of Rs 25 lakh to the families of each of the deceased students, medical reimbursement of expenses incurred by the injured students, provision of travel allowance and dearness allowance to the doctors special teams sent to Vijayawada, ratification of the expenditure incurred towards the accident-related events, request to institute gold medals in the name of the four students who expired and to continue it on an annual basis.

However, it’s been a month and Murthy claims that only some of the bereaved families have received a compensation of 5 lakhs while the rest of the demands have still not been met.

After the accident, parents had wanted the buses to be replaced as they were in bad condition. “The college had promised new buses within a week but there are no new buses yet. A few parents received the compensation, will it bring back our sons? The government should ensure the safety of other students as well,” Murthy says.

As he hopes that the government takes steps to ensure such tragedies do not recur, he is still coming to terms with Pranay’s death. “It is really difficult to see Pranay’s things around us, we are just trying to control ourselves.”