An angel for road accident victims in Kaup

Mangalore Today News Network

Udupi, Sep 20, 2015 :  Whenever a road accident happens on National Highway 66 in Kaup or its surroundings, the first call is perhaps  to Soori Shetty.  A 49 years old angel with a mission  a mission to save the lives of people injured in road accidents.  He has saved several lives by rushing the accident victims to the hospital since 1988.

Immediately he receives the information of an accident, he rushes to the spot and stops any vehicle coming on the road, and takes the injured to hospital. An ambulance takes a lot of time to come. Every minute is important in saving lives, he says.


Soori Shetty, is a mason by profession, has studied till class three. In 1988, he witnessed an accident near Kaup where a car hit a scooter.

He rushed two persons to Kasturba Hospital in Manipal. One of them survived. After this incident, he has always made it a point to help accident victims.  He gets the information about the accident  through many friends who call and even the police.


He works as a mason but does not hesitate to stop work  when he receives a call about an accident. He does not like to leave Kaup for a day. His work has not gone unnoticed. Before mobile phones became common, the Kaup police provided him with a landline. One of his friends provided him with a motorcycle so he could rush to the accident spots.Two months ago, Lakshmivara Tirtha Swami of Shiroor Mutt provided him with an ambulance so he could take the patients straight to hospital without waiting for any vehicle.


How many lives has he saved in the last 27 years? He never counted may be over 300 he thinks, probably it is far more think people who know him   That is not all. Soori  Shetty helps in taking out dead bodies from wells and also transporting decomposed and dead bodies from the seashore to hospitals and never neglects doing a good turn to the needy who can’t  help themselves.