Body exhumed
Senior officers had to exhume the body of a COVID patient at Mole village in Belagavi district on Tuesday after a private hospital wrongly identified the victim .
Payappa Halloli, 82, of Mole, was admitted to a private hospital in Belagavi last week. The hospital called up his relatives and said that he had passed away and that the hospital staff would bring the body to the village.
The staff wearing PPE kits brought the body and buried it in front of the family members. But the relatives could not get to see the face of the body, as it was wrapped in plastic.
In a few hours, the octogenarian patient, who was alive and well in the hospital, called his family to ask why they had not brought his meal packet. The family members were elated to know that their patriarch was alive. They were also angry with the hospital and complained to the police.
A day later, Tahsildar Prameela Deshpande, police and others visited the village and spoke to the Halloli family members. Ms. Deshpande ordered that the body be exhumed. She said the body was of another patient from Gokak and that it would be shifted.
She said that the confusion was created by the hospital staff who had wrongly identified the body. Halloli family members have requested Deputy Commissioner K. Harishkumar to conduct an inquiry into the incident.
