'He asked for water, we gave him': Meet driver-conductor duo who saved Rishabh Pant

Haryana roadways bus driver and conductor rescued India cricketer Rishabh Pant from his damaged car that had caught fire. The duo was honored with an appreciation certificate for their kind act from the authorities.

Panipat (Haryana): Unbeknownst to who he had saved, Sushil Kumar's -- an employee (driver) at the Haryana Road Transport Corporation -- first impulse was to stop the bus to check for the passenger who had suffered a car crash. The occupant was India cricketer Rishabh Pant.

Posted in Panipat depot, Sushil and the bus conductor Paramjeet were returning from Haridwar on Friday as per their usual routine when they saw a car heading towards them from the opposite direction and hitting the divider.

Pant, who was driving his Mercedes Benz GLC Coupe, suffered a life-threatening accident when the car hit the divider and veered off the other side of the road. While Pant was headed towards Roorkee to meet his mother, the driver-conductor duo was coming from the opposite direction from Haridwar.

Kumar witnessed the vehicle wobbling and crashing at Gurukul Narsan. And it all happened in a span of 10 seconds, according to him. Such was the force that Kumar would witness the car, going off course after hitting the divider and coming to their side. Upon seeing what had happened, he immediately stopped the vehicle to help Pant.

Paramjeet, the conductor of the same bus, thought Pant was dead. Before the car would explode and burn into flames, he along with Kumar had hauled Pant out of the vehicle and laid him on the footpath. "Pant was in an unconscious state when we rescued him," he told ETV Bharat. "The fire first broke out in the back of the car and within no time, his car was charred to ashes. We were scared and tried to bring him to his senses. We took him to a footpath and waited for the ambulance to come."

"After rescuing him from the vehicle, we informed the police and called the ambulance. We covered him with a sheet to keep him get warm till the ambulance arrived. We didn't know he was an Indian cricketer. We only did our duty as human beings," Kumar said.

A dazed Pant, then, requested to call his mother. A passenger made the call but the phone was switched off. "He asked us to inform his mother from his mobile phone but her phone was switched off. We stayed with him until the ambulance arrived. We kept talking to him so that he remained conscious till the ambulance arrived. We asked him if there was anybody else in the car but he informed us that he was driving alone," Kumar said.

Kumar called the police station, Paramjeet the ambulance and in a matter of few minutes, he was rushed to the hospital. "When he came back to his senses, he asked for water. We gave him water. An ambulance reached the spot within 15 minutes. We had no idea that he was an Indian cricketer. Being a human being, it was our duty to help him."We felt that he must be running short of cash so we collected cash of around Rs 8000 and handed it over to him in the ambulance," he recalled.

Both of them have now been honoured with a "certificate of appreciation". To which they say, "We only did our duty as human beings" -- a duty that saved one of India's biggest cricketing stars.