A friend alerted me to a story ,  ‘Hand it to the docs’, in theSun Daily (Feb 15, 2012). It was about an insurance agent named Poon who had his hand severed by three robbers when he was withdrawing money from an ATM in Ampang on Feb 3.

The story had three photos - micro-surgeon Dr Palani Ramasamy who reattached Poon’s hand; Gleneagles hospital staff holding the severed hand they found some 100m from the ATM machine; and, in an aluminum bowl, Poon’s hand with its mangled flesh and exposed jagged bones. That’s where the story had me aghast.