Unsung Heroes: Charmadi Hasanabba – a hotel owner at the foothill of a treacherous ghat who turned life saver for accident victims

With no telephone connections in the remote hills, the victims of accidents often succumbed to injuries due to the lack of timely medical care.

This was until a man who started a hotel, The Hotel Charmadi, at the Charmadi village as a 20-year-old in 1971, decided in 1986 to dedicate himself to the task of rescuing accident victims and getting them to the Belthangady taluk hospital in Dakshina Kannada using his meagre resources – whenever he heard of accidents and roadblocks in the remote hills.

Charmadi Hasanabba, now 73, is a legendary figure in the annals of the Charmadi Ghat and an unsung hero for thousands of accident victims when the ghats were a treacherous place to drive – mostly at night and when the monsoon rain descended in full flow.

The Charmadi Ghat was as treacherous for vehicles as it was beautiful for travellers, on account of the narrow national highway 234 (now NH 73) which weaves its way through the hills with 12 hairpin curves. (File Photo)

“In the old days, the roads in the Charmadi Ghat were very narrow. There was an intense flow of vehicles. The road would often get blocked by fallen trees and if it rained heavily, it was very difficult to drive. There used to be accidents all the time. There were no means of communication of the accidents deep in the hills. The only way to get help was to come down to Charmadi village and call the police,” Charmadi Hasanabba recalled from a hospital bed in Mangaluru where he is undergoing treatment for a heart ailment.

“When people would come down to Charmadi to telephone the police to report accidents and seek help, the police would often not be in a position to reach the accident sites in time in those days since the Belthangady police station under which the Charmadi Ghat falls also has 73 other villages under its jurisdiction,” Hasanabba said.

“When accidents occurred, the victims were left without food, water, or help for several hours because somebody would have to come to Charmadi to call for help and the police had to come from a distance of 30 km in Belthangady. This was happening for a long time,” he further said.

“We then decided to rush to accident sites as soon as we received word at my hotel. We would take pictures with still cameras of the site – which is what the police needed – and we would move victims in any available vehicles – trucks or my own car to hospitals,” Hasanabba added.

Over the course of time, word spread that when accidents occurred in the Charmadi Ghat, the fastest possible way to get help was to contact Hasanabba at the Hotel Chardmadi in Charmadi village. In the early days, till he bought a car of his own in 1990, Hasanabba would reach accident sites in any available vehicle.

“There used to be a lot of problems when a victim was taken to the Belthangady hospital in the early years. The hospital wanted to know how the victims were brought for medical care. They wanted vehicle owners to be identified to serve as witnesses. I had many fights with the hospital staff – on one occasion I told them in anger to write that ‘Hasanabba brought the victim on his shoulders to the hospital’,” the 73-year-old remembered wryly.

“The hospital had so many questions to ask while we were only focused on saving the victims by hailing the first available vehicle,” he pointed out. “We were doing this service out of humanity and slowly people started recognizing the efforts,” he added.

One of the incidents etched in his memory, which served as an encouragement for continuing to help people in the Charmadi Ghat occurred in 1986 after a truck accident left a father-son duo unconscious.

“Somebody came down the ghat and informed me. At 3 am in the morning I hired a car, picked up the victims, and took them to the Belthangady hospital. The hospital said they are in a critical situation and that they should be taken to Mangalore. We had taken them from the accident site to Belthangady and we could not abandon them so we hired another car and took the victims to Mangalore,” Hasanabba recalled.

“At Mangalore, the doctors told us that nothing can be done until they regain consciousness or until relatives of the victims give consent. We did not have the details of the family. There was a suitcase in the truck in which we found the address of the truck owner. We sent a person by bus to Chikmagalur to the address and I stayed with the victims until the next day when the family came to the hospital,” Hasanabba said.

When the victims regained consciousness and were discharged from hospital the entire family visited the home of Hasanabba and thanked Hasanabba’s mother profusely. “My mother told me then that the work I was doing was God’s work. It may require me to go to police stations and courts but I must not stop this work,” Hasanabba said.

Over the years Hasanabba’s social service has gained recognition beyond the Charmadi Ghat. In 2023, the Karnataka government awarded him the Rajyotsava Award for social service to mark the anniversary of the state formation day. The Rs 5 lakh cash component of the award was used by Hasanabba to buy an ambulance to continue serving people in the Charmadi Ghat.

“When I started doing this social service, I never imagined it would bring me recognition in the form of a state award. The time was such. I used the money from the award and put in Rs 3 lakh of my own to buy an ambulance. I still have a car but an ambulance is more convenient to take people to hospital,” Hasanabba said.

“I continue the social service. God has given me the satisfaction of saving many lives,” he said.

“Human life is precious and this is what keeps me going. There are still dangers in the ghats but it is a much safer place now for driving due to the broader roads and communication systems,” the 73-year-old said.