Forced out of hospital, tribal father in Chhattisgarh carries dead newborn in bag
Special Correspondent
NewsBits.in
Raipur/Jagdalpur: A 20-year-old tribal man from a remote village in Bijapur district was forced to carry the dead body of his newborn baby in a bag after the Jagdalpur Medical College Hospital authorities allegedly asked him to vacate the bed occupied by his wife immediately.
The incident came to light on Wednesday when Yalam Ramesh, the 20-year-old father from Aaipenta village in Lankapalli of Bijapur, approached the Bastar collector Amit Kataria for help.
Since Ramesh knew only local dialect, Kataria could not gather than he was forced to carry the body of the newborn dead in a bag. The collector asked the Red Cross team of the district to help the young man.
The Red Cross team took him to the hospital and made arrangements of some medicines for his wife Shashikala. They also could not gather that the man was carrying the body in the bag.
It was only later, when Ramesh started leaving the hospital with his wife and the body, that they came to know about the matter and made arrangements with the hospital authorities to provide an ambulance so that the body could be carried to Bijapur.
Ramesh had brought his pregnant wife to the hospital on Tuesday. She gave birth to a stillborn baby on Wednesday. After sometime, the nurse on duty apparently asked the couple to vacate the bed occupied by Shashikala immediately.
Unable to decide what to do with the body, Ramesh put it in a cloth bag he was carrying and left the hospital. Of late, there have been several such incidents reported from the region when people haven’t got ambulance at government hospitals. Photo courtesy: Dainik Bhaskar
