West Bengal hits the headlines for all the controversial and bad reasons. A couple of years ago, the Mamata Banerjee-led government sparked controversy on highlighting our revolutionary freedom fighters as “terrorists” in the Class 8 history textbooks. A history chapter labelled “revolutionary terrorism” narrates the activities of freedom fighters like Shahid Khudiram Bose, Jatindranath Mukherjee and Prafulla Chaki as “extremism and terrorism” which sparked a controversy.
Then again, West Bengal earned a bad reputation for not keeping their surroundings neat and clean. Ever since ‘Swach Bharat Abhiyan’ was launched in 2014, the majority of the states except West Bengal have been making every possible attempt to clean up the streets, roads and infrastructure of cities of India.
Son forced to pay Rs 51,000 to see body of father who died from coronavirus
In a shocking case of hospital apathy, a family in West Bengal alleged that it was forced to pay a sum of Rs 51,000 in order to see the body of a relative who passed away due to COVID-19. As per a report by India Today, the private hospital in question did not even notify the family about the death until many hours later.
“On Sunday afternoon, we received a call from the hospital saying that my father had passed away at 1 am. When we questioned why we were not informed about it, the hospital officials said that they did not have our contact information,” Sagar Gupta who is the son of Hari Gupta who died Saturday midnight, told India Today.
When the family arrived at the hospital, they were informed that the body had been sent for cremation. But when they reached the Shibpur cremation ground, where the body had been taken in the first place, they were asked to pay a whopping Rs 51,000 to see the remains.
The family started interrogating the charges and the amount was later cut down to Rs 31,000. They, however, approached the police station to narrate the ordeal. A police officer reached the cremation ground but was asked to go back after hospital staff said they would speak to a higher staff.
The family also made a video of the entire incident but their phone was snatched away.