A man in Andhra Pradesh carried his dead mother's body on a two-wheeler for 18 kilometres to the cremation grounds after being unable to find an ambulance or an autorickshaw. The video footage from Andhra Pradesh's Palasa shows Narendra riding the bike with his 50-year-old mother's body at his back, and a relative holding the body in place. They were were also briefly stopped by the police but were let off.
Narendra had taken his mother, Chenchu, to a diagnostic centre at Palasa town of Srikakulam district for a CT scan as suggested by a doctor. The woman collapsed and died while waiting for the CT scan test reports. She had been unwell and had shown symptoms of COVID-19. The CT scan reports later revealed that Chenchu did indeed have COVID-19.
Narendra, reports said, struggled to find an ambulance or an autorickshaw to carry the body to the crematorium. With the help of a relative Ramesh, who helped hold the body, Narendra then drove the two-wheeler to Killoyi tribal hamlet in Mandasa mandal — a distance of 18 kilometres — where his mother was finally cremated.
Heart-wrenching—A mother in her 50s dies of #COVID19 after she had low oxygen. But there’s no ambulance, so her dead body is carried by motorbike—by her son & son-in-law, her corpse wedged in-between her sons, ferrying her home. Heart-breaking for India .pic.twitter.com/9HkC5rWnbi
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) April 27, 2021
The video footage was taken when the two men and the dead women were briefly stopped by the local police who let them off after questioning.
Speaking to NDTV, the Srikakulam Superintendent of Police B Raja Kumari said that the family had not reached out to 108, a dedicated service for COVID-19 patients. The official told the media that some private vehicles may have refused to transport the body and the relatives took the dead body on a bike.
In another incident being reported from Visakhapatnam, a one and half-year-old child died in an ambulance while waiting for a hospital bed. The child had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and was breathing from oxygen support in the ambulance while waiting for a bed at King George Hospital near CSR block.