Gujarat ICU Ambulance Catches Fire, Killing Newborn and Three Others
Four burned to death in seconds as ambulance erupts.
In the dead of night on the Modasa-Dhansura highway in Gujarat’s Arvalli district, a private ambulance carrying a critically ill one-day-old infant turned into a roaring inferno around 1 AM Tuesday, instantly claiming four lives—including the newborn, his 38-year-old father Jignesh Mochi, 30-year-old Ahmedabad-based paediatrician Dr Shantilal Rentia, and 23-year-old local nurse Bhuriben Manat—in one of the most heartbreaking road tragedies the state has witnessed this year.
The infant, born just 24 hours earlier in a private hospital in Modasa, had developed severe respiratory distress and was being urgently transferred to a super-speciality neonatal ICU in Ahmedabad; accompanying the child were his distraught father, the treating doctor who refused to leave his tiny patient, the duty nurse, two relatives, and the driver—seven souls packed into a single vehicle racing against time on a dark, deserted stretch of road.
Chilling CCTV footage from a nearby petrol pump captured the final moments. The ambulance is seen slowing down abruptly as thick smoke billows from the rear, the driver leaps out screaming for help, and within seconds bright orange flames shoot skyward, engulfing the entire vehicle; passers-by and pump staff frantically grabbed extinguishers and buckets, but the sealed patient compartment—possibly pressurised with medical oxygen—became an inescapable death trap, charring the four occupants beyond recognition before anyone could breach the doors.
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While driver Ankit Thakor and relatives Gaurang Mochi and Gitaben Mochi managed to escape the front cabin with over 60 per cent burns and are now fighting for life in Modasa civil hospital, firefighters who reached the spot within 12 minutes could only douse the blaze and retrieve four blackened, unrecognisable bodies fused to the melted stretcher; local residents stood in stunned silence as the remains of the newborn—barely the length of an adult forearm—were placed in a tiny body bag.
Arvalli Superintendent of Police Manoharsinh Jadeja has ordered a comprehensive forensic probe involving Gujarat’s top FSL experts, fire auditors, and motor vehicle inspectors to ascertain whether the catastrophe was triggered by an electrical short-circuit in the oxygen concentrator, a ruptured fuel line, faulty CNG kit, or criminal negligence; meanwhile, families of the victims and the Gujarat Medical Association have demanded immediate suspension of the ambulance operator’s licence and a statewide safety audit of all ICU-on-wheels vehicles still plying without basic fire-suppression systems.
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