Jharkhand doctor drives 50 hours to bring stranded daughter from Rajasthan

BOKARO: A father desperate to get his stranded daughter back home in the face of a looming lockdown set off from Jharkhand's Bokaro on Sunday and drove almost non-stop for 50 hours, covering around 2,500km to Rajasthan's Kota and back, to complete his epic journey on Tuesday and almost immediately resume his duties as a doctor.
The 49-year-old man, who did not wish to be named, said he had made up his mind not to stop anywhere because that was the only way he could give himself a reasonable chance to pick up his 18-year-old daughter and return to Bokaro latest by Tuesday.
The girl, who had enrolled in one of Kota's many institutes to prepare for her medical entrance exams, said she was lucky to have a "super dad" who braved Sunday's "janata curfew" to drive all alone through five states to reach her. "We didn't waste a moment. We ate the food he was carrying and made our way back to Bokaro. This journey that my father and I made will be an abiding memory," she said.
The doctor said he kept himself "quarantined" in his car throughout the journey. "I travelled through Jharkhand, Bihar, UP and MP to enter Rajasthan. The roads were empty. Barring goods trucks, I saw very few vehicles plying. Except in UP's Mirzapur, I hardly found anyone on the roads. There were only police vehicles and manned border check points."
While passing through check points in MP, the doctor noticed that none of the cops deployed there had protective gear. "I was carrying some extra masks and sanitisers, which I handed to them," he said.