Man denied ambulance, carries wife's body on stretcher

Kaushambi: Family members of a 35-year- old woman have charged the district hospital with refusing ambulance facility forcing a man to carry his wife’s body on a stretcher, a charge denied by the senior hospital officials.

The video of a man claiming that district hospital failed to provide a vehicle for carrying the body was telecast on local news TV channels.

The footage showed the man, identified as Mahesh Chandra, pulling a stretcher on which his wife Malti Devi’s body lay covered in white sheet after she died during labour pain.

Chandra also alleged that he was asked to pay Rs 800 for the vehicle.

Chief Medical Superintendent Dr Deepak Seth, however, said that the vehicle for carrying the body home was provided free of cost by the hospital.

“The news being shown in a section of media is misleading … the man is pulling the stretcher only from the ward to the parking lot from where the vehicle carried the body home,” Seth said, adding the woman was brought dead.

Refuting claims of the man that money was demanded for the facility, he said it could be some private vehicle owners outside the hospital who might have asked for money.

“The hospital vehicle is provided free of cost,” he said.