Feb 8, 1999
|
|
|
|
ANDHRA PRADESH No Graves for Them The failure of Hyderabad's government hospitals to give a decent burial to infants causes embarrassment to CM Naidu. By Amarnath K Menon When the bloated bodies of nine infants were found floating in an open drain near the Hussain Sagar lake in the heart of Hyderabad -- all in a span of five days -- it raised a stink. That was expected. What wasn't expected was that the issue would snowball into a major debate about the callousness in the disposal of the dead infants and foetuses and the worsening hospital management system.
The macabre saga came to light by chance. On a tip-off, the police picked up a plumber Shaik Chand Pasha, 29, who does contract jobs at the government-run Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad. Pasha revealed the shocking details of how hospital staff collected Rs 200 to Rs 400 from the parents of the still-born babies or infants who died in the hospital to arrange for the burials. The plumber, who actually buried the bodies, got just Rs 60. According to Pasha, when he began this part-time routine six months ago, he buried the bodies by the side of the railway track and other vacant places behind the hospital. "I stopped the practice after I found a dog digging out a body and eating it," he told stunned officers, adding that since then he simply dumped the bodies in the drain. He says he disposed of 31 bodies this way since January 1. "Sadly, he does not consider what he did to be wrong and punishable," says C. Ramachandra Naidu, DCP (North Zone), Hyderabad. Ironically, Pasha took on the onerous task some months ago after the undertaker from a nearby graveyard stopped his weekly visits to the Gandhi Hospital to take away the bodies of infants. The indifferent hospital authorities turned down the undertaker's demand for a regular job and salary to ferry the bodies by a rickshaw to the graveyard. He was then paid only Rs 500 a month. The government-run hospital's failure to give a decent burial to infants is now a big embarrassment for Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. Pasha's revelations have cast a shadow over the chief minister's much-hyped drive for a clean and green city as well as the claim of making government employees accountable. Naidu has directed state Chief Secretary V. Ananda Rau to fix responsibility and work out ways to put an end to the bizarre practice. As an immediate measure, the Hyderabad Police have decided to arrange for the disposal of bodies by getting the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad to perform the funerals and bill the hospital management for expenses. Similar efforts are also to be made in district hospitals. People like Pasha took advantage of a haphazard system for disposing of bodies to make money. In most cases poor parents, already in distress, abandon the bodies in a desolate area of the hospital or entrust the task to the hospital staff. There's no proper system for disposal of the bodies. And till cleaner -- but costlier -- systems like the use of incinerators are provided for in government hospitals, little bodies may continue to be consigned to drains and dustbins. |
|
Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication BUSINESS TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY © Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
When the first five bodies
were found on January 20, it raised fears about an infanticide. It was thought that
unscrupulous managers of nursing homes and hospitals located in the area around the drain
had connived with parents who wanted to eliminate new-born girls or unwed mothers getting
rid of unwanted children. Though the odd body of an infant -- and organs and surgical
waste -- appearing in dustbins or drains is not uncommon in India's scandalously
inefficient hospital waste disposal system, the unusually large number this time seared
the conscience of the city. Unable to pin the blame on anyone, a baffled police registered
cases under Section 318 of IPC -- concealing the birth of children by secret disposal of
the bodies. 
