People in Teliamura nostalgic over working of administration in the wake of the heart-wrenching death of truck driver Mihir Lal Debnath

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, August 6, 2025

The heart-rending death of truck driver and owner Mihir Lal Debnath due to administrative callousness in Teliamura yesterday in the morning seems to have shaken the conscience and heart of people across the state. It was thanks to social media that a large section of people had seen Mihir Lal Debnath trapped in his accident-fallen vehicle imploring people for rescuing him . The people , specially those in Teliamura, expected the administration to be up and doing to rescue the man from his painful death but it was not to be as Mihir Lal inexorably moved towards his painful death. By the time he was dragged out by rescuers it had been too late.

Angrily reacting to what they witnessed , specially the administrative sloth bordering on apathy and callousness, people today recalled how a similarly placed driver under the weight of his loaded vehicle had been gasping for life in Mungiakami area under Teliamura. But still, the then SDM (Teliamura) Bimbisar Bhattacharjee who had rushed to the spot at Mungiakami with his subordinate staff and managed to rescue the driver alive from under his truck that had been coming loaded with cement towards Agartala from Dharma Nagar.

The truck carrying cement had overturned at Mungiakami with the driver below its weight. Within moments of receiving the information Bimbisar Bhattacharjee, unlike his present counterpart in Teliamura Parimal Majumder, had reached the spot and called in CRPF jawans , disaster management team members . With a herculean effort Bimbisar Bhattacharjee had managed to have the unfortunate driver rescued from under the truck to the delight of all . The crucial date was March 24 2015.

But what the incumbent SDM (Teliamura) Parimal Majumder did to the now deceased driver Mihir Lal Debnath was a study in sharp contrast in administrative conduct. Despite receiving information he slept peacefully on Monday night, never caring to visit the spot of the accident and trapped driver Mihir Lal Debnath and when contacted in the morning he took the ruse that he was busy in a meeting. By that time the few people who had been trying to rescue Mihir could not arrange an iron cutter or chain saw and in front of all wretched Mihir Lal fell dead before being dragged out. “Nothing can be more painful than what we saw yesterday , the man could have been saved with a little initiative on the part of the subdivisional administration ; the chief minister has ordered an inquiry but we think that the SDM and the DCM should have been put under suspension as the first step for gross dereliction of duty” said P.K.Debnath , a businessman and eye-witness to the ghastly death of Mihir Lal Debnath in Teliamura yesterday.

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