Bihar deputy chief minister hurt in minor mishap at Delhi airport

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi Sunday suffered a minor injury at the Delhi airport when a boarding bus ferrying him with others applied brakes suddenly to avoid collision with an aircraft.

Bihar government Protocol Officer P.N. Mishra told IANS that the minister was inside the Jetlite airline boarding bus around 9 a.m. to catch a flight to Ahmedabad for election campaigning in Gujarat when the incident occurred.

According to Mishra, the driver of the boarding bus was talking on his mobile and was apparently oblivious to his surroundings. He suddenly applied the brakes to avoid collision with an aircraft heading for the parking bay from the runway.

In the process, the minister who was standing in the bus lost his balance and fell down, leading to slight pain in his back for which he was taken to the Spinal Cord Injury Centre in Vasant Kunj in south Delhi. He was discharged after two hours.

"The airport authority is responsible for this incident," Mishra said.

However, the official spokesperson for Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) contradicted Mishra's version, saying the minister was not injured at all and did not need any medical help.

"In fact, he refused any medical help, saying he was alright," he added.

The DIAL spokesperson claimed the whole incident had been "blown out of proportion".

He said the driver applied the brakes not to avoid collision with an aircraft but with another bus, that of Air Deccan, moving ahead of it.

He said the Air Deccan bus had stopped suddenly on sighting an aircraft on the runway.

This is not the first such incident at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Last month, a woman aeronautical engineer, Sanskriti Sinha, working with Air Deccan was run over by a heavy vehicle while she was moving towards the hangar area to attend to some technical requirements of an aircraft at night.

In yet another accident, a security man riding a motorcycle inside the airport at night had accidentally hit another airport official, resulting in the latter's death.

(IANS)

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