A day after a stillborn baby girl from Chennai’s Pulianthope was laid to rest, a staff member from the Kilpauk Medical College (KMC) Hospital’s mortuary was suspended for negligence. As per reports, the suspended employee has been identified as Panneer Selvam. A committee will be formed to investigate the issue and till they come out with a report on the issue, Panneer Selvam will remain under suspension.
In an interview with Puthiya Thalaimurai, Dr Muthuselvan, the Dean of KMC, said that after police investigation, it was revealed that the baby had died of natural causes and there was no post mortem conducted. He added, “In consultation with the state’s Health Minister [Ma Subramanian] and KMC’s Director of Medical Education, we suspended the mortuary staff member as soon as we came to know of the incident. An investigative committee has been set up. The [Health] Minister has asked us to closely monitor the mortuary so that incidents like this are not repeated.” He also added that the investigative committee will look into the hospital staff demanding Rs 2,500 for the cremation of the baby.
Panneer Selvam had given the corpse of the baby to her father Masood in a cardboard box. TNM learnt that the corpse was not covered with a shroud as well. The family was forced to send someone to buy a white shroud to wrap the baby’s body as per Islamic custom.
The baby was born preterm on December 5 amid the heavy rains in Chennai. Masood and their relatives were unable to get the mother, Sowmya, to the hospital on time as their streets were heavily flooded and it was impossible to find an ambulance.
Even after the child was stillborn, the parents struggled to cut the umbilical cord. Sowmya and Masood’s neighbours offered to take the child and mother by cycle rickshaw to the G3 hospital but on arrival, they saw the gates were locked and nobody responded to their calls. They went to the Muthu Hospital next where treatment was initially refused but later administered after the police intervened.
Despite the family’s distress, staff at the KMC hospital had demanded a payment of Rs 2,500 for the baby to be cremated. Masood told TNM that the staff in the hospital had asked him to leave with his baby’s corpse if he could not make the payment. The father of the baby had also told TNM that he could not afford to make the payment and did not know her body’s condition after four days in the mortuary. Only when the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) intervened, were Masood and his family able to bury their daughter on December 10.
A complaint has now been registered with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) based on TNM's reportage of these horrific events.
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