Evan as acute shortage of medical oxygen is being felt in various parts of the country amid a raging pandemic, a video has emerged from Madhya Pradesh's Damoh in which Union minister Prahlad Patel is seen threatening a person who has been demanding oxygen.
According to an NDTV report, when a person outside a hospital in Damoh went to the Union minister to complain about the shortage of oxygen, the minister, upset by the manner in which the person was speaking, told him he will give him two tight slaps.
The incident happened outside the district hospital in Damoh. Recently, there were reports that people looted oxygen cylinders from this hospital when a truck reached there to deliver cylinders at the hospital.
The cylinders were looted by the relatives of patients as soon as they were stacked in the storeroom of the hospital.
Damoh had recently witnessed a bypoll after Rahul Lodhi, who had won from Damoh on a Congress ticket in 2018, resigned from the state assembly as well as the party in October 2020 and joined the BJP.
UPDATE:
On Friday, the office of Prahlad Patel stated that the video was taken out of context and reflected only an “edited” part of the conversation. The minister's office claimed the incident was not related to oxygen, but the man in the video was using abusive language.