Manjunath Kalmani, a techie who suffered crippling injuries in a car accident in 2002 in the US, finally succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday in the Indian capital.

He was paralysed from the neck downwards, and had suffered spinal cord injuries. After US authorities showed their unwillingness to treat him, he was sent to Delhi and was admitted in a government hospital in Safdarjung.

Kalmani was a software engineer working in the US on an H-1B visa, and worked as a software developer at weather.com. The company encountered heavy losses and he lost his job along with many others.

He met with the accident when he was jobless and did not have the cash to renew his health insurance. As he was unemployed, he wasn't entitled to any disability insurance in the US.

Whether he would have survived had medical care been provided in the country he had chosen to work in must remain unanswered. But It would appear that the land of the free is only free if you can afford to pay. X

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