Kolkata teen used mom’s influence to skip screening

The coronavirus scare has hit the heart of the Mamata Banerjee government — Nabanna, the state secretariat — as West Bengal home secretary Alapan Bando-padhyay went under “home isolation” along with his wife Sonali Chakrabarti Bandopadhyay, who is also vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, from Wednesday within two days of his meeting with the bureaucrat mother of the state’s first Covid-19 patient who had taken her son to the secretariat instead of admitting him to a hospital.

At least 10 more government employees, who were around them, are also in isolation at home. The development came a day after the Covid-19 virus was confirmed in the teenaged boy after his return from the UK. The Oxford University student was found to be deliberately ignoring advisories to get quarantined at a hospital by using his mother’s influence.

Furious over his and his mother’s callousness, CM Mamata Banerjee cautioned: “There is no space for the VIP or LIP. The rules to be followed in my home and yours are the same. Nothing can be more callous than roaming around with symptoms like an irresponsible person which can infect others also. ”

Landing at the Kolkata Airport on March 15, the 18-year-old boy, whose father is a doctor, skipped the “thermal screening” for Covid-19, giving the reference of his mother, a West Bengal Civil Service (Executive) officer posted as a special secretary in the state home and hill affairs department at Nabanna, which also houses the CMO. He was then advised to visit the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Beliaghata for tests, but he did not, sources said.

Alerted by airport officials, the state health department contacted his mother and strongly recommended that she take her son to a hospital. On March 16, the woman bureaucrat took her son to M.R. Bangur Hospital, where he was examined in the deputy superintendent’s office and was asked to take admission at the ID Hospital.

But, instead, his mother took her son in her office car to Nabanna, where she attended a meeting with Mr Bandopadhyay.