Pyare Khan
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A brief biography
As in 2021
Soumitra Bose , April 26, 2021: The Times of India
Leading transporter Pyare Khan, who started by selling oranges outside Nagpur railway station in 1995, has so far spent Rs 85 lakh in less than a week to ensure around 400 metric tonnes of medical liquid oxygen reaches government hospitals in and around Nagpur, saving the lives of numerous Covid patients.
Son of a small grocer from the slums of Tajbagh, Khan is today the owner of a Rs 400 crore worth company. Though the administration has promised to settle his dues, this former autorickshaw driver, who now owns a fleet of 300 trucks, considers the expenditure as his duty-bound donation or “zakat” during the holy month of Ramzan.
He has decided not to accept payment from the government, considering it as his service to humanity. “I can serve the society with my oxygen donations, which will reach across all communities in this crisis time,” he said. “If there is a need, we can also plan airlifting some tankers from Brussels,” he said.
The initiative of Khan, whose rags to riches story is a case study at IIM Ahmedabad, also includes a payment of Rs 50 lakh for 116 oxygen concentrators, which he aims to donate to AIIMS, Government Medical College and Hospital, and Indira Gandhi Government Medical College and Hospital. Khan, who also manages a network of 2,000 trucks across India with offices in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan, had to pay three times more to hire two cryogenic gas tankers from Bengaluru urgently.
He needed them to transport liquid oxygen from different parts of the country. As high demand for oxygen and increasing death rates started to plague Nagpur, Khan did not stop to bargain down the high price being quoted and paid over Rs 14 lakh for each trip.
Featured in TOI’s “Nagpur Heroes”, Khan is today voluntarily managing the supply and transportation of medical liquid oxygen on behalf of the district administration and civic body, after Union minister Nitin Gadkari stepped in to salvage the situation.
“We have also distributed more than 500 cylinders to different hospitals and another 360 cylinders have been given by the Union minister (Gadkari) for charity,” he said. “Getting tankers is the biggest challenge. I am arranging for tankers from different places and sending them to places like Raipur, Rourkela, and Bhilai to get them filled with liquid oxygen,” said Khan.
