Days after a video emerged of a man in Odisha carrying his wife’s body home on his shoulders from a mortuary, a shocking video from Kanpur revealed another case of government apathy. Sunil Kumar allegedly lost his young son on Friday, even as he carried him from door to door at a Kanpur hospital to get a doctor to see him.
According to this ANI video, after 12-year-old Ansh developed a fever in the night, Sunil took him to the Lala Lajpat Rai hospital in the city. There, he was made to wait for 30 minutes at the emergency ward without any doctor examining Ansh, before finally being referred to the children’s ward.
According to reports, the children’s ward was about 200 meters away. Not provided with a stretcher, Sunil carried Ansh and when he reached the children’s ward, the boy was declared dead.
The disbelieving father said that it only took him nine minutes for him to reach there. “It took me nine minutes...how could he be dead in nine minutes?" Sunil told NDTV.
Ansh was in class 6 and according to his father, a very bright child. After Ansh was declared dead, Sunil carried him back home on his shoulder, again without any help from hospital staff or onlookers.
The Uttar Pradesh government has launched two inquiries into the allegations of the child not being provided timely medical attention. State health minister Ravidas Mehrotra said that the guilty “will not be spared”.