Ambulance Charges Rs 1.2 Lakh For 350-km Ride, Owner Held

An ambulance owner was arrested on Friday, May 7, for overcharging COVID patients. One of his patients happened to be an elderly COVID patient . The owner demanded Rs 1,20,000 for transporting the patient from Gurugram to Ludhiana (a distance of nearly 350 km), the police said.

The accused Mimoh Kumar Bundwal ,who is originally a resident of Dashghara village in Inderpuri, is also an MBBS doctor by qualification. He was working as a junior resident in a government hospital in South Delhi and quit his profession two years ago. He started an ambulance service after that, reports The Hindustan Times, quoting Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Urvija Goel.

Since the family members of the patient were finding it difficult to arrange an ambulance service in Ludhiana, they had to contact a Delhi-based ambulance service. Bundwal initially demanded Rs 1.40 lakh but later settled for Rs 1.20 lakh as the patient's family already had oxygen stock with them and did not require any extra oxygen from the ambulance service. The patient's daughter alleged that an amount of Rs 95,000 was paid to the ambulance service as advance whereas the remaining sum of Rs 25,000 was paid immediately upon reaching Ludhiana, reported NDTV.

On Thursday, May 6, a senior police officer from Delhi said that they had received information about an ambulance service being run in Dashgarha of Inderpuri by the name Cardeacare Ambulance Pvt Ltd. They had been charging people two to three times the normal amount to transport COVID-infected people.

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