The efforts of a good samaritan who took recourse to the social media proved to be successful in identifying an accident victim on Wednesday evening.
The victim had fallen down while attempting to board an MTC bus in Triplicane on Tuesday night. Sadly, the victim was critically ill on Wednesday.
Speaking to The Hindu , Mohammed Jifri, an advocate, said the accident took place around 7 p.m. when the man tried to board a moving bus on Triplicane High Road near Ratna Café.
“He slipped and fell on the road and suffered a severe injury to the back of his head. He was knocked unconscious instantly. One among us who witnessed the accident called the 108 ambulance and rushed him to the Government Royapettah hospital,” said Jifri, a resident of Manali.
The victim’s identity couldn’t be established as he had no identification documents or a mobile phone on him.
Thereafter, Jifri made an attempt to find out who he was by posting the injured man’s photograph with an emotive message in Tamil on Facebook. The post went viral on the social networking site with thousands sharing the link.
According to P. Jothi Prakasham, sub-inspector, Anna Square traffic investigations, who probed the accident case, the injured man was shifted to Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (GH) and was registered as unidentified.
“Jifri had posted his and my cellphone numbers and we received numerous calls from Chennai and different parts of the State enquiring about the victim,” the officer said.
The FB post paid off finally around 4 p.m. on Wednesday with a friend of the victim spotting the photograph and alerting the man’s family who reside in Royapettah.
The victim was identified as Abdul Latif (28), a resident of Dr. Besant Road.
Latif’s brother Shahul Hamid rushed to GH where doctors informed him that Latif was very critically ill.
