Hindustan Times
Patna, Sep 13: The three-hour chakka jam called by the BJP, Shiv Sena and other outfits caused an inconvenience to many but none more than Sunita Devi.
The expecting mother was forced to deliver her baby on the road, adjacent to the Danapur railway station, on Wednesday as no vehicle was available to take her to the nearby hospital.
Sunita’s husband Jitendra Kumar, a resident of Sabarinagar, tried his best to hire a vehicle to take his wife to the Danapur Sadar hospital in the morning. But as all vehicles were off the road due to the chakka jam, nobody agreed to help him. In desperation, Jitendra carried his wife on his bicycle to the hospital. But as soon as the couple reached Garikhana, Sunita started writhing in pain and could go no further. A big crowd soon assembled and seeing her plight, made a makeshift tent by the road where Sunita gave birth to her son with the help of some local women.
Luckily for Sunita, Malti Devi, a midwife, was at hand to help her through the delivery. Later, local residents provided the new mother with medicines, milk and tea.
The police soon arrived at the spot and provided the couple with a rickshaw to take their new baby to the hospital.
Interestingly, there was a debate over naming the infant ‘Jam’ or ‘Ram’ as he was born during the agitation for the Ram Setu.
Protests across the country
IANS
New Delhi: Cities across the country witnessed major traffic snarls yesterday as activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) blocked roads and disrupted train services to protest the Setusamudram sea channel project off the Tamil Nadu coast that they say will destroy a 'bridge' held sacred in Hindu mythology.
In the national capital, VHP activists started their protest around 8am, blocking bridges across the Yamuna river, at traffic signals, some major arterial roads in west and central Delhi and at least 20 flyovers, leading to massive traffic jams in the rush hour.
Views of protests in different places (Pics PTI)
The blockade ended around 11.30 am but took vehicular movement hours to limp back to normal. No violence was reported in the city. Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat said around 1,000 people, including former MPs and legislators, were detained.
But VHP activists' traffic blockades that lasted over three hours frazzled thousands of motorists and office-goers as some 20 city areas, including Shakti Nagar, Dwarka, Lajpat Nagar and Nizamuddin, were severely affected.
The situation was grim on National Highway 8, which connects the city to Gurgaon in Haryana, and two bridges that connect east Delhi to other parts of the city across the Yamuna.
"It took me at least three hours to reach my Connaught Place office. It usually takes me just 45 minutes. There was utter chaos and the roads were jam packed," said Neeraj Thakur, a resident of Preet Vihar in east Delhi. The situation was equally bad in other major cities.
Many busy intersections in India's financial capital Mumbai, including S V Road, Saki Naka and Thurbe Naka, were completely blocked. Around 10 people were taken into custody in the city, police said.
Some 300 members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and VHP blocked the Chennai-Mysore Shatabdi Express train in Bangalore for an hour, activists said. Office-goers had a tough time as traffic was held up on six busy roads, including Tumkur Road and Mysore Road.
Chennai's arterial Anna Salai Road was blocked around noon, and so were many intersections. About 300 protesters were arrested in the Tamil Nadu capital and a few hundred more in other cities and towns of Tamil Nadu.
About a thousand people were arrested in Coimbatore and surrounding areas.
In Haryana, National Highway 1 was blocked at Karnal, leading to a massive traffic jam, stretching several kilometres long. Activists also disrupted train services at Ambala.
Police resorted to a mild cane charge at Chandigarh and adjoining Panchkula town to disperse VHP activists. In Punjab's industrial town of Phagwara, the Amritsar-Delhi highway was blocked and so was the rail track that connects to Delhi. Train services were disrupted in Jalandhar as well.
In Patna, a woman was forced to deliver a baby on the road due to traffic jam. She and her husband were on their way to a hospital in an auto rickshaw.
Nearly 200 VHP activists led by BJP legislator Nitin Navin were detained for disrupting train services at Patna's main railway station.
The strike paralysed traffic to and from the Taj Mahal city of Agra for several hours. The Agra-Jaipur highway was blocked near Fatehpur Sikri and vehicles from Delhi were also held up at Mathura.