Raqif Makhdoomi
“They didn’t let me touch him for the last time,” says Inna Makan, mother of 23-year-old Sahil, who died in an accident. She touched her cheeks while saying it. It resembled as if she wanted to feel her son. Her frustration is clear in all the interviews she is giving after her only son passed away.
“His head needed support. They picked him up without proper care,” she said while she was screaming, yelling, and her eyes full of tears. Tears roll down her cheeks as she demands justice for her only son.
Sahil was brought up by his mother as a single parent. She lost her husband when Sahil was a kid. She did everything she could to ensure the best education for her son. She provided all the luxuries she could. Sahil’s mom, in one of her interviews, explained what she faced as a single parent till now. She described everything society made her face just because she lost her husband.
With each sentence I write, I get goosebumps. Before putting the incident into words, I had to go through all the details. And as it’s time to put all those details into words, the voice of Sahil’s mother is ringing in my ears. No mother deserves to see the end of her son the way she has seen it. Sahil was her lone son, and she did everything for him. She had no one other than him, and now she doesn’t even have him.
“I have no reason to live. I have no reason to wake up. I have no reason to go to work,” says Sahil’s mother, with her eyes clearly showing what she’s going through. There are clear marks beneath her eyes, which clearly show how much she’s been crying since she lost her lone son.
A video on X posted by Sahil’s friend, where he’s seen dancing, is flashing before my eyes as I write this article. I fail to understand how his mother is dealing with this loss.
Sahil left on his sports bike and never returned. A minor who was rash driving a Scorpio car hit him. Sahil was lying on the road with no one taking him to the hospital. Had he been taken to the hospital, he could have been saved. But he wasn’t. He was lying on the road, and his sports bike was broken into three pieces.
Imagine the speed and the force that hit Sahil, leaving a sports bike into three pieces. A sports bike is very heavy, and it can’t be easily broken. Even his mother highlighted these points while she was speaking to a news channel.
She wasn’t annoyed only with the minor who was rash driving but also with how her son was handled after the accident. She describes how the hospital staff misbehaved with her just because she was demanding proper treatment for her lone son.
She explains how she wasn’t allowed to take the dead body of her son and how she wasn’t even allowed to give a hug to her son.
She was forced out of the hospital while her son was lying dead on the bed and wasn’t given treatment. Her only crime was that she was screaming for proper medical care.
Imagine her pain while being forced out of the hospital just because she wants her son to be treated well and saved. Proper medical care is a fundamental right under the “Right to Life.” Sahil was only 23 years old, and his basic right was violated just because he didn’t belong to an influential family.
The father of the minor who crushed Sahil to death, in an interview, said that he’s sorry for what happened. But Sahil’s mother strongly reacted to the apology. No one will accept “sorry” after such a big loss. The apology came 15 days after Sahil was crushed to death. The father of the minor claims that he wasn’t in the city when this incident took place. Inna Makan calls the “sorry” almost ironic. Why wouldn’t she? It took 15 days for his father to realize that he had to be sorry.
Sahil was the only reason his mother lived, and now she has no one to live for.
Sahil’s mother, while mourning the death of her son, said she never made any savings just because she wanted to fulfil all the demands of her son.
As Sahil turns to ash, a confirmation letter from Manchester University reaches his home, confirming his admission to an MBA program. The letter came, but it finds no joy. The one it has come for is now ash. The letter from Manchester must have brought another wave of grief to his mother.
This isn’t the first time that we are witnessing an accident case that has shocked the whole country. A well-known Porsche accident case took place on 19 May 2024. Vedant Agarwal, aged 17 years, killed two motorbike riders in an automobile collision in the Kalyani Nagar neighbourhood of Pune, Maharashtra, India. The deceased, Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta, were residents of Madhya Pradesh. All the accused in this high-profile case have been granted bail. Three out of four were already on bail, and the fourth one has been granted bail a few days back.
People were taken aback when the 17-year-old juvenile was granted bail after being asked to write a 300-word essay and spend 15 days with traffic police. Two bikers were crushed to death, and he was allowed to walk free. This is where it all started. If you are driving a Porsche, a 300-word essay is all it takes to free you. Had strict action been taken, Sahil must have been celebrating his selection at Manchester University, and his mother would have had a reason to live. But it’s all otherwise.
Data on road accidents in India as per the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways:
A total number of 4,80,583 road accidents were reported by police departments of States and Union Territories (UTs) in the country during the calendar year 2023, claiming 1,72,890 lives and causing injuries to 4,62,825 persons.
The number of road accident fatalities in India rose 2.3% to over 1.77 lakh in 2024, resulting in the death of 485 persons every day, Parliament was informed.
These figures are enough to give us an idea of how bad the driving culture we have is. Even though the ministry has taken initiatives to deal with the growing road accidents, the initiatives are yet to show any positive results.
Today it’s Sahil who became the scapegoat of rash driving by a minor. Tomorrow it can be you or your child. It’s high time that we take responsibility to make roads safe. Or we shall not have any safe roads for driving.
