Around 2:15pm on May 22, a teary-eyed Dharmendra Bhardwaj recorded a video, seated in his car parked outside Max Super Speciality Hospital, Patparganj. In the six-minute video, he recounted how his 68-year-old mother was denied treatment by the hospital after she tested positive for Covid-19. The deputy medical superintendent, he said, informed him via intercom to arrange his own bed and ventilator. “I approached so many other hospitals after that… no response anywhere. We are in India’s capital and we feel so helpless. First, you teach the public how to arrange their own beds and ventilators,” said Bhardwaj in the video. It was only after the video went viral that Max hospital called him and agreed to treat his mother. Even the Delhi High Court took suo motu cognisance of the incident and pointed out how the video “raises serious issues of public concern”. Bhardwaj’s mother died on May 31.
The next day at the Nigambodh Ghat crematorium, Bhardwaj had to buy a PPE kit for Rs500 from another mourner on the spot to complete his mother’s last rites. “There is no humanity in the way they handle dead bodies there,” he said. “Have you seen a porter handle luggage at a railways station? I get goosebumps when I recall that day.” He said that the authorities there charged different rates from grieving families. “I paid Rs8,000,” he said. “I saw another man screaming about how he paid Rs20,000 and yet his relative’s body was so shoddily treated. They deny us entry on the pretext of contamination. The priest and the helper did not even wear a mask.”
Bhardwaj and his four-year-old daughter, both asymptomatic, have tested positive and are in home isolation.