Suraj Prakash Sharma, a 26-year-old resident of Chandra Vihar in west Delhi, and his brother stepped out late in the evening on Tuesday to answer the call of nature. According to the Hindustan Times, there was a loud cracking sound and Sharma, who works as a furniture maker, collapsed. Blood was flowing from the back of his skull and he was taken to a hospital nearby where doctors dressed his wound and asked him to come the next morning for an X-ray.
Sharma was plagued by severe headache all night and the X-ray next day revealed the presence of something at the base of his skull. Not sure what was causing the headache, the doctors recommended that Sharma be taken to a bigger hospital.
"They asked us to go to a bigger hospital and we went to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital," Neeraj, Sharma's brother, was quoted as saying.
The doctors there ordered a CAT scan and when the report came, the source of Sharma's headaches became clear — a bullet lodged just below his skull.
"The man is lucky," Dr Subodh Kumar Gupta, head of neurosurgery at DDU hospital said after performing a four-hour long surgery to remove the bullet. "The bullet entered through the lower rear side of his skull, changed trajectory after hitting the bone and went down. It passed through critical areas that maintain blood pressure and respiratory functions, and got stuck right on the surface of the C2 vertebra."
The C2 vertebra is the second uppermost vertebrae that connects the backbone with the skull.
The force of the impact had flattened the 1.5 cm bullet.
Sharma is said to be positively responding to the treatment but the actual progress can only be determined once he gains consciousness.
A case has been filed at the Nihal Vihar police station and the police said that the matter is being investigated.
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