A two-and-half-month-old baby on July 17 died due to a delay in treatment after the door of the ambulance, in which he was brought to a local hospital, failed to open because of a malfunction, alleged the infant's father.

The infant, who was slated for a cardiac surgery in a private hospital here, had to be rushed to Dr BR Ambedkar Memorial Hospital nearby from Raipur station in the morning after his condition started deteriorating, he said. "I contacted Sanjeevani Express 108, a free ambulance service, in the morning and rushed my child to Dr Ambedkar Hospital. When we reached the hospital, the door of the ambulance could not be opened for about 40 minutes," the infant's father told reporters.

He said the child had to be extricated from the window of the ambulance and rushed to the hospital where doctors declared the infant as dead on arrival. The parents had come from Gaya in Bihar by train to get the cardiac surgery performed on the child at the Sathya Sai Hospital here. GVK EMRI, which operates the Sanjeevani Ambulance service, however, denied the allegations.

"The allegations are false. After getting a call for an ambulance at 10.15 am, the vehicle was rushed to Raipur station and it reached there at 10.18 am. Technicians who checked the vital parameters of the child found no response," said Shibu Kumar, government relationship officer of GVK EMRI. He claimed that technicians brought the patient to the Ambedkar Hospital where the door of the ambulance got stuck for a "few minutes" due to "mechanical problems". He said that they extricated the child from the window of the ambulance and rushed him to Ambedkar Hospital.