On Sunday night, an orthopaedic surgeon had to bury his associate, a neurosurgeon who died of COVID-19, in the middle of the night using his bare hands and a shovel at a crematorium with the help of two hospital ward boys after the undertakers fled when a mob, protesting the interment, attacked them with bricks, stones, bottles and sticks and chased them away.
Their opposition was due to a misconception that the contagion may spread in their neighbourhood if the virus victim's burial took place.
Dr Pradeep Kumar, in coversation with senior journalist Barkha Dutt on MOJO, broke into tears as he explained how his friend Dr Simon was denied a dignified burial.
"I drove the ambulance myself, I dug the grave myself, I put mud on his body because we had no shovels,” he said and added that though he was terrified he couldn't leave his friend there.
The windscreens of the ambulance in which the body of the 55-year-old neurosurgeon was brought to the crematorium were smashed and even the casket was not spared.
They attacked the undertakers and corporation sanitation officials, among others, using bricks, stones, bottles and sticks and chased them away.
Dr Simon's 16-year-old son was watching his father being denied a proper burial.
"Just as soldiers know they're going to die, so do we," said Pradeep who could be seen sobbing throughout the 20-minute long interview. "I am not a hero, I'm just a human Being,” he said.
"Is it so much to ask that you will treat doctors as at least human beings?,” he further asked.
The incident had sparked off a storm with the Indian Medical Association warning of "appropriate retaliatory measures" if the authorities fail to stop such incidents.
"It is a matter of great concern that these doctors who had died in their line of duty be treated shabbily and in such an uncivilised manner," the doctors' body said in a statement, adding if the state governments do not have power to stop such incidents, "they lose their moral right to govern".
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami said the government has ordered that the burial or cremation of people who had died of coronavirus be done with "due protection" but expressed regret over the incidents where people protested against such formalities for the deceased doctors.
