Inspector Rajeswari was expecting to see the body of a young man inside the water-logged Kilpauk cemetery in Chennai on the morning of Thursday, November 11, based on the calls her police station – TP Chatram – had received. But on reaching the cemetery at 8.30 am, she and her team noticed that the man – Udayakumar – was still alive, but unmoving and weak. He was soaked in rainwater, was breathing and had a faint pulse.
What happened next has gone viral on social media. The police officer lifted the 25-year-old man and carried him over her shoulders. Videos of her briskly walking with Udayakumar over her shoulders, trying to get him to a hospital, despite the heavy winds and rain have caught people’s attention.
In the video, she first goes to the police jeep, where the other officers hand over a dry shawl for Udayakumar. After that, she is seen running down the road to catch an auto, carrying Udayakumar. With an auto in sight, Rajeswari carefully puts Udayakumar inside the vehicle and asks the driver to take him to a hospital. Other police officers placed a shawl inside the auto before Udayakumar was made to lie down in the passenger seat. The officers also accompanied him to Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital where he was admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Chennai inspector Rajeswari rescues unconscious man lying inside Kilpauk cemetery. Carries him and puts him inside auto. He’s admitted to KMC now. @thenewsminute pic.twitter.com/sOv27brKPd
— Sreedevi Jayarajan (@Sreedevi_Jay) November 11, 2021
“We received calls stating that the man was dead and found lying next to the graves. But when the team went and checked he was alive. They wasted no time sending him to a hospital. Although they dialled 108 for an ambulance, they did not wait but instead took him to a hospital when they found an auto,” an officer from the TP Chatram police station told TNM.
Udayakumar reportedly works in the Kilpauk cemetery. “He is 25 years old and lives with his mother nearby. There was water inside the cemetery where he was lying. We are unsure how long he had been there but it was both raining heavily and there was water logging inside the cemetery,” the officer added.
Incidentally, Inspector Rajeswari was also part of the investigations into the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl with hearing disability in 2018, where 15 men were later found guilty. Journalist Divya Chandrababu posted the same on Twitter, and said that “Inspector E Rajeswari has always been a star.” Divya revealed that Rajeswari had also cracked case of child trafficking and sexual assault earlier in August, and also raided a shopkeeper for illegally selling ganja.