Live and let die?

On Saturday night, as my roommates and I were coming home from a party, we passed a dead body on the road. There had clearly just been a motorcycle accident and the dead cyclist was splattered on the ground with his limbs unnaturally askew.  Although there had been time for the police to block off the road around him (and to congregate at the scene in fairly large numbers) there was no ambulance anywhere in sight. The police appeared to be making no effort to tend to the body in anyway; the dead cyclist was on full view to passersby.

It was a sobering and terrible sight and as our car needled past the scene my roommate mentioned that he had passed another dead body as he was walking down the street a few weeks earlier. I asked him how he knew the man he passed was dead.

"At first I didn't," my roommate said. "I thought he was just sleeping because, you know, lots of people sleep on the streets. But there was something very unnatural about the angle of his limbs which caught my attention. So I looked a little closer and saw that there were bugs coming in and out of his mouth and clustered near his eyes."

Yes, that sounds pretty dead to me.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Nothing. What could I do? The man was already dead and there was no way I was calling the cops. So I just walked on."

I've been thinking about my roommate's response, and in particular, what I would do if I passed a dead body on the street. While it might sound callous to "just walk on", I really don't think there are too many other options here. Because whatever you do, you don't want to call the cops.

The Indian police scare me.  Here's one fun fact: by law, male police officers are not allowed to arrest women at night unless they are accompanied by a female police officer. This is because male police officers were sexually assaulting or raping the women in their custody at such frequency that the Indian government decided it was better just to let any female perpetrators get away with their night-time crimes than to risk their being in police custody. A friend of mine here who works with an NGO on police corruption issues has told me straight out that if I should ever be robbed or assaulted I need to call a male friend immediately and I must not call the police until I have a trusted man by my side. If I want to call them at all. "Honestly," she said, "there's very little chance that the police here can bring your attacker to justice and you really run some risks getting them involved. Call your embassy, perhaps, but not the police." (Note, there is actually a woman's only police hotline--but my friends have tried calling in to see if anyone answers, and it's pretty hit or miss).

So, maybe if I pass a dead man in the street I do just walk on--after all, there really is nothing I can do for a person who has already died. But what happens if I pass an injured person or a dying person?

There is a terrible scene in Katherine Boo's non-fiction book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, in which she describes a man injured in the street over the course of several hours with passersby doing nothing to help; no one calls for help or even brings the thirsty man water when he's calling out for it. (He eventually dies of his injuries which could have been taken care of if he'd made it to a hospital). It is a horrific image--but I'm beginning to understand why that might happen here.  No one wants to call the cops for reasons above and no one wants to call an ambulance or a hospital as it is possible that the caller would then be responsible for payment of medical fees (or otherwise implicated in whatever led to the injury).  If you're not involved, it's really, really best not to get involved.

Also, let's be real; in a city with this much poverty there are sick and dying people all over the street--just not easily identifiable as so.

Still, while my sense of self preservation may convince my conscience that walking by a dead body without action is justifiable, I don't think I could walk by a person in need of immediate medical care in the same laissez-faire manner. I think I would have to call the cops or a hospital in that case and, perhaps, dangerously involve myself in a situation.

Fingers crossed I never have to.