Bihar: Labourer carries wife's corpse on shoulders after hospital refuses ambulance

Muzaffarpur (Bihar): In a re-run of the sordid incidents of Kalahandi and Vaishali earlier, relatives of a woman were forced to carry her body home on their shoulders after being allegedly denied an ambulance at a government hospital in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district.

Wife of Suresh Mandal, a labourer and a resident of Shivpuri locality here, was admitted to Sadar hospital on February 18.

After her health deteriorated, she was moved to ICU last night where she died, Civil Surgeon Lalita Singh said.

Family members of the woman did not have enough money to hire a private ambulance so they made a plea to the hospital administration to provide them one to carry the body home, he said.

But the hospital did not provide ambulance and her family members had to cart the body on their shoulders covering a distance of one km, Singh said.

The Civil Surgeon said she has been informed that the driver was not available in the hospital at that time due to which the ambulance was not provided.

"I have asked a probe into the sorry incident," she said, adding those found guilty would be punished.

The country was shocked to see images of Dana Majhi carrying his wife's body slung over his shoulder for 10 km to reach his village in Odisha's Kalahandi district after being denied help from the hospital authorities.

In Bihar's Vaishali district, two policemen were suspended for tying a rope around a dead man's neck and dragging the body for a few hundred metres from the Ganga river bank in the absence of an ambulance.