The district administration and Agartala Municipal Corporation had a tough time in organising the funeral of a patient who committed suicide on Tuesday after she found out she was COVID-19 positive. Attempts to bury the 51-year-old woman at a graveyard failed amid protests by locals.
The impasse continued till midnight and the body was taken back to the mortuary at the GBP Hospital where she ended her life by hanging herself from the ceiling in the toilet attached to a ward. She was first admitted in a general medical ward of the dedicated COVID-19 hospital with fever and cough.
The woman hailed from Tripura’s Amtali, but the authorities planned to lay her to rest at the graveyard at Joypur. The locals argued that she should be buried at Amtali instead of Joypur as the burial ground fell within a residential area.
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As the protests continued, the authorities decided to abandon the plan and sent the body to the mortuary.
Meanwhile, a strong contingent of paramilitary Tripura State Rifles rushed to the GBP Hospital as top government officials met to decide the next course of action.
It was decided not to bury the woman in any marked graveyard, but across the barbed wire fencing along the border with Bangladesh, but within the limits of Indian territory. The fencing in Tripura was erected 150 yards from zero point of the International Boundary to respect a bilateral agreement between India and Bangladesh. She was finally laid to rest at 2 a.m. on Wednesday at a spot not far from her home.
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AMC Commissioner Shailesh Yadav led the team of officials from police and administration were involved in the burial process which took hours.
