Poor couple’s 30-hour ordeal to ferry dead infant

Chandigarh: Holding the lifeless body of her deceased 20-day-old child like a rag doll, Shabana is a picture of pure grief. Inconsolable, Shabana’s is the raw pain of a mother who has not just lost her first born, but has also been denied the right to take her child’s body back home to a village 40 km ahead of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh by ambulance operators for want of money.

Charu Chhibber

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 12

Holding the lifeless body of her deceased 20-day-old child like a rag doll, Shabana is a picture of pure grief. Inconsolable, Shabana’s is the raw pain of a mother who has not just lost her first born, but has also been denied the right to take her child’s body back home to a village 40 km ahead of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh by ambulance operators for want of money.

The sheer insensitivity of the human kind was at its worst display on the PGI campus where the distraught couple had to literally beg for help for more than 30 hours to every passerby in sight, including doctors, nursing staff, security guards and visitors, but in vain. All they wanted was an ambulance to take their dead child home for the final rites. But since Shabana and her husband Mahinder, who works in a factory back home in Saharanpur, did not have Rs 3,500 to pay for the ambulance, they were turned down by all seven NGOs running ambulances.

The couple was spotted by this Chandigarh Tribune correspondent yesterday around 12 noon outside the mortuary at the PGI in a devastated state.

“Our child died on Sunday morning after being under treatment at the PGI for over 10 days, following which he was kept at the mortuary. Since then, my wife and I have been running around asking for help to arrange for an ambulance to take him home but have been turned away by everyone we have contacted so far,” said Mahinder.

“On Monday morning, a family, that was to take their son’s body to Saharanpur, promised to share the ambulance with us. I got the requisite permission from the mortuary and was handed over the body but by the time I came back with the baby, they were gone,” lamented the distraught father, tears rolling down his cheeks.

When this correspondent called on the contact numbers of authorised ambulance operators displayed outside the PGI mortuary on behalf of the couple, all seven operators refused to take them to Saharanpur without being paid. The couple was then directed by this correspondent to the office of the Chief Security Officer of the PGI, where they were offered prompt help. An ambulance was arranged for them at 2.08 pm to take the body home.

Manju Wadwalkar, Public Relations Officer, PGI, said the institute offered help to the poor in such cases if the authorities were informed or an official complaint was made.

Breach of contract by ambulance operators

Sources at the PGI said according to the contract between the institute and NGOs operating ambulances, every time such a request was made, the ambulance operators were required to inform the PGI authorities, which provide the ambulance charges from the poor patient fund after conducting a thorough check regarding their background.