An inmate of the Beggars’ Colony, who sought to escape the wave of deaths that has been engulfing the home since last week, died in a road accident near Nelamangala on Tuesday night.
Nelamangala police said that the person was run over by a lorry near T Begur on the national highway. Police are yet identify the
person.
Meanwhile, it is slowly emerging that even though there were people dying in the Beggars’ Colony near Kamaskhipalya, doctors were unavailable to attend to inmates. August 15 was a holiday on account of Independence Day. For two days following I-Day, there were no doctors on duty at the Beggars’ Colony. Despite the absence of doctors, however, the deaths were termed ‘natural’ deaths. Who certified these as natural deaths? The answer to that question is not known.
One official said, “We did not know what to do when such large numbers of people began to die. We wanted to dispose of the bodies at the earliest. There are regular deaths at the colony, and we declared these too as natural deaths.”
No attendance register exists in the colony. None of the records maintained show the presence of doctors on August 16 and 17. Data produced by the Nirashritara Parihara Kendra (NPK), which is responsible for the supervision of the Beggars’ Colony, shows that an unusually high 103 deaths occurred here between August 1 and August 20. Colony officials claim that in the past 20 days, many bodies were sent to the crematorium.
Officials at the Beggars’ Colony, though, contend that the failure is purely procedural: Implementation of regular procedure is lacking, and the work culture is lax. That is why so many Beggars’ Colony residents take ill, explained one official.
Try to understand, by speaking with the officials responsible for running the colony, what went wrong, and you will find yourself going about in circles. The NPK lays the blame at the door of the doctors; doctors are quick to blame a lax administration. The superintendent and secretary of the colony claim that they have not been at their jobs long, so their predecessors are to blame.
Head warden Hanumantharayappa said, “The actual problem started many years ago. I have repeatedly reminded the officials and doctors that we need more hands on the work, as there has been an increase in the number of inmates in the colony in recent times.”
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