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New Delhi: In a shocking case reported from Jharkhand's Chaibasa, a father carried the body of his 4-month-old son to his house, some 70 kilometres away in a grocery bag. The child had reportedly died at the Chaibasa sadar hospital and his father was asked to wait for an ambulance, as there was none available at the moment.
According to a report in the Times of India, the 4-month-old baby boy had been admitted to the Sadar Hospital in Chaibasa with high fever. Blood tests revealed that he had malaria. The hospital began treatment, but the child suffering from high fever, lose motion and breathing trouble could not be saved.
According to the doctors, the child's father, Chataumba was told initially that the hospital did not have proper means to treat him and therefore he should take him to a better facility in Jamshedpur. Doctors had referred the baby to Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College & Hospital in Jamshedpur. However, the man expressed inability and pleaded with doctors to continue his baby's treatment.
Though the child was given oxygen support and medicines, he could not survive and died on Friday, just a day after being admitted to the facility. After he was informed of his child's death, Chataumba requested the hospital to provide him with a 'shav vahan' (ambulance in local parlance). However, the hospital staff informed him that at the moment there was no ambulance available there.
The father of the child was told that the Sadar Hospital only had 1 working ambulance, which was currently away in Manoharpur, roughly 80km from Chaibasa, district headquarters of West Singhbhum. He was asked to wait for 2 hours if he wanted the ambulance. He quietly nodded to the staff members.
The man then left the hospital, and bought a thick grocery bag from the nearby market. He reportedly entered the paediatric ward of the hospital and picked up his son's dead body from there. He put it inside the bag and left the place. No doctor or on-duty nurse saw the man leaving.
The man only had Rs 100 in his pocket and could not have arranged for a private vehicle for his ride back home. He then took a bus to his village, Baljori.
Meanwhile, the staff started searching for Chataumba when the ambulance arrived. But he was nowhere to be seen. The man also did not have any mobile phone, said the report filed by Chaibasa sub-divisional officer, Sandeep Anurag Topno. The report fiuled in the matter, concluded that the man left with his child's body in a haste and chose not to wait for the ambulance.
Meanwhile, when Chataumba reached his village and narrated his ordeal, fellow villagers were left shocked. This bewilderment soon turned into rage against the government and the hospital administration.
This case from Chaibasa however is not an isolated incident and earlier also many people, especially the poor have been forced to carry the dead bodies of their loved ones, in the absence of ambulances.
One case which saw international outrage, happened in Odisha in 2016. Here a man, named Dana Manjhi was forced to walk for 12 kilometres with his wife's dead body, in absence of an ambulance. In another case, reported from Maharashtra in September 2024, a couple walked through a muddy forest path with the bodies of their 2 young sons. The boys had died of fever and there was no ambulance available to carry their bodies from the hospital.
In a case similar to the one reported from Chaibasa, in June 2025, a man travelled by bus with his newborn's dead body. He was forced to travel some 90 kilometres with the body in a plastic bag, after the hospital refused an ambulance.
Such cases definitely force one to think about the condition of healthcare infrastructure in India.
