I could only cry, knowing my family was out there: Kerala man recounts 42-hour ordeal stuck in lift

Thiruvananthapuram: Raveendran Nair endured a harrowing 42-hour ordeal trapped in a malfunctioning lift at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital, sheds light on serious safety oversights within the institution. For 42 hours, he kept hoping that a sliver of light would open in front of him and through it, he would return to life.

"What is going on in the outside world? Could my wife and children be searching for me desperately?" Raveendran, who was trapped in the lift for two days without anyone knowing, never wants to remember the fear inside the four walls. It felt like being cut off from the earth itself, he said.

"If I had been pregnant, critically ill, or if I was a child, I would not be alive now."

Raveendran was alone when he entered the lift. Before it reached the first floor, the lift crashed with a loud noise. In that shake, his cell phone fell and the display broke. He waited for a while, hoping the lift would soon be fixed and someone would come to rescue him. However, the hope was eventually lost. The emergency number on the lift was dialled somehow, but no one picked up the phone. Repeatedly pressing the alarm switch yielded no response as well. “All I could do was cry because there was an outside world and I had a family there,” Raveendran’s words quivered.

“I felt terrible pain knowing there was no one to hear my voice in an elevator inside the main building of a medical college, where so many people were coming and going, and no one even came to check the broken lift as well… I kept hitting the wall and screaming and finally fell on the floor with a thud. Sometimes I would wake up and bang on the walls with hope. Hours passed by without medicine or food. Just because there was ventilation, my life did not slip away. I came back to life only because some employee noticed something unusual and opened the lift," he said.

The incident represents serious negligence within the healthcare system. The fact that this happened at the State's largest medical college, which operates 24 hours a day, is embarrassing for Kerala's health sector..

Perhaps Raveendran's life would have been in danger if he hadn't been found on Monday morning. Elevator accidents are not new here. Three years ago, a young woman died after falling from a lift at the regional cancer centre on the medical college premises. A native of Pathanapuram died that day while visiting her mother, who was undergoing treatment. The top of the lift, which was under maintenance, was covered with pieces of wood. No warning signs were posted. When the incident became controversial, health department officials said they would not repeat such mistakes. However, the current incident shows that all such assurances are mere words.