Pilgrims hire ambulances to bypass traffic to reach Kedarnath faster; caught by police

Lucknow: The police team deployed on the road to Kedarnath, a famous Hindu pilgrimage in Uttarakhand’s Rudraprayag district, at Sonprayag was taken aback when they saw two ambulances arriving at the checkpoint near Gaurikund with their sirens blaring and lights flashing.

The cops were surprised to see the ambulances as there was no hospital or treatment facility at Gaurikund, from where the devotees heading for Kedarnath begin their trek.

To their shock, the cops found that there were no patients in the two ambulances. Instead, the ambulances were packed with devotees bound for Kedarnath.

The police seized the ambulances and apprehended the drivers. It later turned out that the pilgrims had hired the ambulances in Haridwar for going to Kedarnath in a bid to avoid traffic and reach there quickly.

The two drivers, identified as Nikhil Wilson and Krishna Kumar, told the police that the pilgrims had hired the ambulances to reach the shrine faster.

Their plan almost succeeded as the ambulances got past several checkpoints enroute Kedarnath.

‘’We grew suspicious as there was no hospital at Gaurikund nor had we received any call about any medical emergency and so we stopped the ambulances and conducted checking,’’ said a police official.

The official said that they were investigating if more ambulances were being used as taxis to carry pilgrims on the Char Dham Yatra route. The route these days is crowded with the pilgrims since the Yatra started on April 30.