An emaciated man lay on a road off Kestopur canal for at least two days with no agency willing to rescue him.

Police said they had once tried and failed as the man resisted rescue attempt. The local councillor said he was not aware of the man lying on the road.

A resident posted the man’s picture and a note on her failed attempt to shift him to hospital and it garnered attention from several quarters.

The Telegraph made queries with the police and councillor Bikas Naskar about their alleged indifference and both initially pleaded helplessness. A few more queries later, the woman got a call from the police. “They were finally ready to do what they could have done two days ago: take the man to a hospital,” said Aditi Basu Roy, the Kestopur resident who led the drive to have the abandoned man rescued.

She had spotted him from her fifth-floor apartment, clicked his photograph and posted his plight on the social media.

The man, wearing only a green T-shirt, had been lying on a kutcha road near the canal. “I spotted the man on Tuesday afternoon. Since then I have been trying to help him with food and water. Some neighbours are also helping. He needs medical help. The worst fear is, he would be run over by any vehicle as there is no light on this under-construction stretch,” Basu Roy had said before the man was shifted to hospital.

Earlier on Thursday evening, police officers said they had tried to shift the man to a hospital but he had “scratched us with his long nails.... We could not force him as he looks weak.”

Within an hour after this newspaper started making the queries, a team from Baguiati police station reached the spot with members of an NGO and an ambulance. The man was shifted to RG Kar hospital around 10pm.

Basu Roy said the officers asked her for a bedsheet and a lungi for the man. “I gave a bedsheet and a towel,” she said.