Hospital did not treat her for hours: Family of Kerala girl who died after suicide attempt

Gauri, 15, a Class 10 student at Trinity Lyceum school at Thanagassery in Kollam, took the extreme step after being allegedly harassed by her teachers.
Hospital did not treat her for hours: Family of Kerala girl who died after suicide attempt
Hospital did not treat her for hours: Family of Kerala girl who died after suicide attempt
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On October 20, 15-year-old Gauri Neha jumped from the second floor of her school in Kerala's Kollam district.

The teenager, a student of the Trinity Lyceum school at Thanagassery in Kollam was injured in the fall and taken to the Benziger hospital in the district.

Gauri died on Monday, she breathed her last at the Thiruvananthapuram Ananthapuri hospital, where she had been shifted to and placed on ventilator support.

The family of the school girl has alleged that she was kept in the Benzinger hospital for about four hours without being given any proper treatment.

Gauri’s father Prasanna Kumar told The News Minute that she had spoken to him at the Benziger hospital Kollam, where she was first admitted.

“She had told me that her body was in pain, and I consoled her saying nothing will happen to her. When someone asked her what happened, she told them she did it because a teacher named *Manju insulted her (one of her teachers),” Prasanna Kumar said.

“They took her to a room, they said it was the ICU but it was a room with no facility. It did not look like an ICU,” he alleged. “They told me nothing has happened to her, that there was only a small injury in her head and we can take her home after 6 hours of observation. I did not know that they were talking about taking her dead body back home,” Prasanna Kumar said as he broke down.

The father alleged that none of the doctors attended to Gauri in the ICU, and that there was just one duty doctor present, who spoke Tamil.

“We had been asking them to discharge her since the beginning, as there were no facilities. But they weren’t willing to. They kept repeating that she had no severe problem. But when a person we know checked the scan of her head, they told us she had internal bleeding. We insisted and got her discharged after that. They hadn’t taken a scan of any other part of her body, other than her head,” he alleged.

"My daughter did not speak after that,” he said.

Gauri’s uncle and Prasanna Kumar’s younger brother Prakash alleged that the school authorities and the hospital are connected in some way - that they come under the same management. He also alleged that the hospital intentionally did not give Gauri proper treatment to hide the incident.

"The district government hospital and many other hospitals were nearby, then why did they take her to this hospital? Because they wanted to hide the incident. We are sure that they intentionally delayed treatment and refused to discharge her just to keep her quiet,” Prakash alleged.

Meanwhile police have seized some documents from the hospital following the relatives’ complaint. Police have also questioned a doctor at hospital regarding this.

A police officer told TNM that it was confirmed that the hospital had hidden the severity in Gauri’s case to the relatives.

Manju*, name changed

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