Wives of Injured Recall Horrible Moments After the Collapse
The woman alleged that treatment was delayed at the hospital because staff insisted on an advance payment before admitting him. “They said they would not admit him or treat him unless we paid ₹20,000 first,” she said.
Hyderabad: Two distraught women waiting outside the hospital recounted the desperate moments after the collapse of a scaffolding of a seven-storey under-construction building at Toli Chowki, and the struggle to get their husbands treated. One of the women, the wife of injured worker R. Mahesh, said her husband was initially believed to be dead because of the severity of his injuries until someone checked his pulse and realised he was still alive.
“They thought he had died in the collapse because he was not moving. Someone decided to check the pulse and found that he was still alive,” she said, recalling the confusion and panic at the site. They are the natives of Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh.
According to her, there was a delay in getting an ambulance to the accident spot, forcing workers and locals to arrange an autorickshaw to rush the injured man to the hospital. “They took him in an autorickshaw because the ambulance had not arrived yet. While they were doing that, they found another person under the rubble,” she said. Another injured worker was M. Mahesh, from Odisha, who came to Hyderabad for work.
She said the ambulance eventually reached and shifted her husband to the hospital, while she followed separately in the autorickshaw after receiving the call about the accident. “Later, the ambulance brought him here, and I reached in the auto,” she said.
The woman alleged that treatment was delayed at the hospital because staff insisted on an advance payment before admitting him. “They said they would not admit him or treat him unless we paid ₹20,000 first,” she said.
She said the family struggled to arrange the money as they were migrant workers with limited cash on hand. It was only after her brother-in-law arrived and paid the amount that the hospital staff admitted him. Doctors later informed the family that the worker had suffered severe injuries and paralysis on one side of his body.
“They told her that one side of his body is paralysed,” the wife of the other injured worker, M. Mahesh, who is from Odisha, said, standing outside the hospital as relatives waited for further updates on his condition.
Both the workers have known each other through work for the past three years, the wives said.
