On July 29, Datta Prasad took to Twitter to write about his father's death due to COVID-19. He wrote how in the middle of the pandemic, his father and two others were diagnosed to be COVID-19 positive after they attended a friend's marriage anniversary. While he expressed his frustration at the casual attitude which many harbour towards following rules to keep the virus at bay, what was especially intriguing was how the hospital where his father died, registered 'cardiac arrest' as the cause of death instead of COVID-19, on the basis of request by relatives to do so.
"The justification by my relatives for not reporting COVID was that it would've led to electric cremation, which would've been a blasphemy and not given peace to his soul. So, the crematorium staff was kept in the dark about my dad's condition and about the people exposed to him, who cremated him without any regard for social distancing. When I raised objections, I was told nobody can follow the precautions and that's how the world works," tweeted Datta Prasad.
Likewise, in Mumbai's suburban Marol, the family of a 40-year-old COVID-19 positive man was given the cause of death as kidney failure by the hospital which was based in Mira Road so as to avoid the "inconvenience caused by following COVID rules before and at the time of cremation," says Jolly Antony, an activist based in Mumbai's Andheri. "The official BMC certificate later certified it is a COVID death. So because the hospital which is based in Marol, wrongly labelled it as a non-COVID death, there were no safety precautions followed by anyone. Everyone, right from the ambulance guy to the others involved in the cremation process, were told that it was a non-COVID patient," says Antony, adding, "If there are comorbidities, it is easier for hospitals to pass it off as a non-COVID death. But things like these could be a result of the stigma around the disease. COVID essentially takes away from one the chance to grieve and to carry out the rituals. But hospitals are bound by ethics and to partake in such malpractices is absolutely unpardonable."
In suburban Mumbai, a 30-something woman tells THE WEEK about a close relative whose COVID-19 death was certified as non-COVID by the "authorities who came home to inspect," despite the deceased clearly having been a positive, discharged patient of the novel coronavirus. "This may be happening," says Oomen Kurian, who heads the health initiative at ORF in India. "This kind of behaviour involves huge risk for those involved, especially the healthcare staff. There is a possibility of the family and the patient colluding to report it as a non-COVID death due to religious reasons, but there is no evidence that the scale at which it is happening is high. Nobody will take that kind of risk especially at times of high awareness, alertness and strict rules in the system." He adds that there have been reports of these kind of cases across South Asia especially for religious reasons in countries like Pakistan where people do not want to forgo the body of their loved one to the state and not be able to perform last rites.
"It is likely that there are cases (here too) but the scale will not be high," says Kurian.
