In a moving incident, a woman clutching to the body of her elderly father had to plead with passersby for a couple of hours for her help, with none coming forward for entrenched fear of COVID in public psyche. At last, the police had to intervene and arrange the shifting of the body to their village for funeral.
The incident took place at Palamaner town, 40 km from here, on Thursday evening.
According to the Palamaner police, Venkataramaiah (73) of Kalagatur village of Gangavaram mandal was asleep in front of his house in the early hours of Saturday (August 8), when a cow from the neighbourhood accidentally stamped on him in darkness, and fractured his ribs, as it was found later.
As he complained of acute pain, his daughter Hemalatha took him to the Government Hospital at Palamaner. From there, she was reportedly directed to a private hospital. In the absence of a scanning facility there, the doctor is said to have advised that the patient be taken to Tirupati.
Died midway
On Wednesday, when the woman was getting ready to take the patient to Tirupati, he developed convulsions and was rushed to a private hospital at Palamaner in an autorikshaw, when he breathed his last. The auto driver reportedly dumped the body on the roadside and left.
The daughter kept pleading for help but in vain. “The fear due to the prevailing COVID-19 situation resulted in no help reaching the helpless woman. When we got the information, a team of Blue Colts police rushed there and shifted the body to their native village Kalagatur nearby. It was the police who had arranged the vehicle for shifting the body,” sub-inspector (Palamaner) K. Nagaraju said.
