Mobs stop Indian doctors' burials: 'Covid-19 took his life, why take his dignity?'
Digging the grave was slow, harrowing work. As Dr Pradeep Kumar and his two assistants shared only a single shovel between them, they took to using their hands, desperately and hurriedly grabbing fistfuls of mud, looking fearfully around every few minutes.
At about six feet deep they stopped. Kumar, convulsing with sorrow, rolled the wrapped body of his colleague, Dr Simon Hercules, into the grave, then quickly covered it over with earth. Under the cover of midnight darkness, the three men ran for their lives out of the cemetery.
“What happened to Dr Simon made me lose my faith in humanity,” said Kumar. “It should never happen to anyone ever, ever again.”
The events surrounding the death of Hercules, one of several doctors to die from Covid-19 in the state of Tamil Nadu in the past few weeks, are symptomatic of a plague of misinformation about the virus that is having devastating consequences across India. In particular, the fear that coronavirus can spread from a dead body has led to several doctors and patients being denied dignified burials, with their funerals the target of mob ire.
Hercules had been a familiar face around Chennai’s New Hope hospital. The 55-year-old neurosurgeon and hospital managing director was known as a gentle, hardworking man of few words; nothing would get between him and his patients, not even a global pandemic. But three weeks ago he developed a cough and fever, then was put on a ventilator for respiratory distress. Already vulnerable as a diabetic with high blood pressure, he died last Sunday.
Yet as news of his death from
Covid-19 flashed up on local TV channels, the community’s response was not sorrow, but anger. Hercules was a Christian so his body would be buried, not cremated as is the Hindu custom. That night a crowd of around 200 gathered at the Christian cemetery to demand officials refuse to bury the doctor there, fearing the virus would spread into the soil.
Emergency arrangements were made to bury the doctor at another Christian cemetery. But, as his wife, Anandhi, and 18-year-old son, Anton, and several colleagues, including Kumar, an orthopaedic surgeon at New Hope hospital, stood by the graveside, a violent mob descended.
“They were screaming at us to leave and take the body before it spread the virus to everyone,” said Kumar. “It was a crowd of about 60 people, pelting us with sticks and stones. We all had to run for our lives. The ambulance drivers got very badly injured as they desperately put Dr Simon’s body back in the ambulance, and all the windows got smashed as they were driving away. It was terrifying, and so traumatic for his wife and son.”
Back at the medical centre, Kumar gathered two assistants, put on personal protective equipment and got back into the damaged ambulance, where Hercules still lay, his body bag now covered in glass and broken medical equipment. They drove back to the cemetery and there, at midnight, dug Hercules’s grave, terrified the the mob would return.
“It was terrible, his family wasn’t even there,” said Kumar, his voice shaking. “Coronavirus already took his life, why should it also take his dignity in death?” Hercules’ family told the Guardian they were too traumatised to speak.
Dr K Senthil, president of the Tamil Nadu Doctor’s Association, said Hercules’ case had been a wake-up call for state authorities. “When we heard what had happened we were all shocked and saddened and were extremely angry at the government as well,” he said. “The Tamil Nadu chief minister has promised that from now on any healthcare official who dies from Covid will be given a formal government funeral and [he will] ensure that army and police personnel will be present.”
Yet Hercules’s case is far from a oneoff. Coronavirus has reached even the most remote corners of India and there are now upwards of 25,000 cases, with misinformation and attacks on both the living who have caught the virus, and the dead, becoming widespread.
On 15 April, Dr John L Sailo Ryntathiang, 69, the founder and director of Bethany Hospital in Shillong, become the first doctor in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya to die of Covid-19. The news was met with panic, and the family’s plans to cremate his body and place his ashes in a coffin to be buried at his farmhouse were halted when hundreds of protesters descended on the crematorium. The crematorium then refused to deal with the body, while on social media the dead doctor and his family were subjected to abuse.
For 36 hours, no place could be found to lay Ryntathiang to rest and, in desperation, his son-in-law Arthur Wungthingthingpublished an open letter. “We do not know whether his cremation is over. We were not there to weep beside his body,” he wrote, adding: “My father-in-law literally spent his life in the treatment of his patients. This is not an acceptable way to honour his memory.”
Both Kumar and Ryntathiang’s son, David Sailo, said they did not blame people, who were fearful and deprived of information on coronavirus, and said it was the government’s responsibility to educate the community about the virus, and offer adequate protection for medical staff, both in life and in death.
“It was a terrible ordeal for the family but we do not hold anyone responsible,” Sailo said. “The fault lies with the government that proper advocacy on this issue was not given to the public. We take it as a blessing that our family has been chosen as the Covid-19 family and so many shortcomings have been exposed. The government still seems to be asleep.”