An Indian man had to carry his wife’s body on his shoulders for almost 12 km as he had no money for a van and the hospital authorities allegedly refused to arrange one. “I pleaded with them, saying I am a poor person and can not afford a vehicle to carry my wife’s body”, Manjhi told Odisha TV, according to the Hindustan Times.
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“The District Collector of Kalahandi has ordered an inquiry into the incident”, state urban development minister Pushpendra Singhdeo told India TV News.
Majhi said he wrapped the body of his wife in a length of cloth and carried it on his shoulders as he could not get an ambulance.
For those in such a situation, the Naveen Patnaik government had launched the “Mahaparayana” scheme in February, offering free transportation of bodies from government hospitals to the residences of the deceased.
Amangadei Majhi, 42, had died from tuberculosis at the government hospital.
She said preliminary report suggested that the tribal man took the dead body without informing the hospital authorities.
The hospital, in the Kalahandi district of Odisha, denies it sent Manjhi away without a transport vehicle, according to CNN.
Meanwhile, Melghara village in Kalahandi district witnessed a huge crowd as journalists and a Congress fact finding team came to meet Majhi and his 12-year-old daughter. He started walking towards his home in Melghar village in Kalahandi’s Thuamul Rampur block after hospital authorizes failed to provide him a van or ambulance.
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Calling it “shameful”, Prakash Majhi, a local tribal leader, said if the government was really serious, the officials could have gone to his village and conducted the probe. In April, a family from Andhra Pradesh had to tow their daughter’s body in a rickshaw for her last rites, the newspaper said. “This caused a lot of resentment among the tribal community”. “While the Chief Minister says stringent action will be taken against the guilty, the health department tries to shield the culprits”. It was Singh who informed the authorities concerned about the incident and he “had to move heaven and earth before the ambulance reached the spot”.
