NMC ambulance driver beaten up by Covid victim’s kin

Nagpur: Mahendra Bhoyar, 22, working with NMC’s Lakadganj zone, was dragged down from a moving ambulance and thrashed by the kin of a Covid-19 victim at Gangabai Ghat on Saturday. Kotwali police have registered offences against two persons.
It’s learnt the relatives of the Covid victim had first demanded to see the face of the body, though there is a huge risk and so it is not allowed, when the NMC team was waiting for their turn for cremating the body. Sources said NMC employees, in their PPE kits, had tried to cooperate with the relatives by showing the face of the deceased man but many of the relatives kept on going near the body.
Despite repeated requests to refrain from such behavior, the relatives kept on insisting they wanted to see the body and tried to touch it. Bhoyar had initially requested one of the relatives to stay away from the body as he was also trying to hold it.
Seeing the situation turning ugly, Bhoyar was trying to take the vehicle ahead with the body in it when the relatives dragged him down from the moving ambulance. Bhoyar was nearly crushed under the wheels after falling. He was dragged up by the relatives, who started raining blows on him.
Bhoyar said the relatives of the male Covid victim targeted him for trying to stop them from touching the body wrapped in protective covers. The relatives were also unhappy with the private hospital’s treatment and high expenses, and also abused Bhoyar before attacking him.
“I have myself lost two family members in Covid and could not see their faces. I had extended all possible help and cooperation to the kin of the Covid victim, as the pain of losing one in the pandemic is not unknown to me,” he said.
“It has become an everyday routine for us to hear abuses and be targeted by families of Covid victims,” lamented Bhoyar.
The cops were alerted by the senior official accompanying Bhoyar in the ambulance, following which a FIR was lodged against two unidentified persons.