Now, 33-yr-old patient goes missing from CoEP jumbo facility

LATEST SHOCKER FROM CITY’S BIGGEST COVID-19 CENTRE

When family went to pick up the woman, they were left searching for her around the premises; next day, facility officials said she had already been discharged 4 days ago. Matter escalated to PMC chief, police complaint filed

Chaos and mismanagement at the city’s COVID-19 jumbo facility inside College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP), seems to be far from over just yet. In the newest shocker to emerge from the centre — which everybody had ironically pinned their hopes on earlier to tackle the ongoing crisis better — a 33-year-old female coronavirus-positive patient has now “gone missing”.

While the woman was admitted here on August 30, the ordeal for her family began on Sunday (September 13), when they had gone to pick her up after recovery and discharge. After some confusion, they were first told she will be let out only on Monday — and then, in a total backflip, an official told them she had already been discharged four days earlier, blaming the error on miscommunication between the old agency running the jumbo facility and the new one.


Now, the family has been running from pillar to post to find their loved one, and has filed a missing person complaint with the police, as well as written to the divisional commissioner and Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) chief to intervene.

The young woman, a resident of Yerawada, had on August 26 gone to the Annabhau Sathe Auditorium, where testing is being done for COVID-19 by PMC.

Her results emerged as positive on August 28, after which she was first admitted to Sassoon General Hospitals (SGH) on August 29. The next day, around 4.30 am, she was shifted to the CoEP jumbo facility, along with three other COVID-19 patients besides her.

Two weeks down the line, when her relatives reached the centre to take her back home, she had seemingly just “disappeared”.

The patient’s mother, 53-year-old Ragini Gambire, is in a panic about her missing child. She lamented, “My daughter was expected to be discharged on Sunday, but when we reached, the doctors first said she is not in her bed and will be discharged by that evening. Later that day, we were informed that they could not find her! We continued to look for her till 3 am around the premises, at whichever places we could access, and spoke to myriad staffers. Later on Monday morning, our whole family members reached the location again and started looking for her till around 3.30 pm — and suddenly at this juncture, officials started claiming that she has been discharged four days ago.”

The missing girl’s aunt, Sandhya Sapkal, also claimed officials are taking the incident very lightly and not concerned about the patient. “We have asked them for documents — like who signed her discharge papers — and closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera footage, but they are acting blissfully unaware. They only claim that the administration has changed, so they can’t help us. On Sunday, they said they will give the information on Monday. We were there at the facility till 3 am on Monday, and yet they remained ‘unaware’.”

Shakeel Sayyed, a social activist who has been helping the family track down the woman, said officials’ responses are vacillating each time. “First, they said she is not in her bed. Then, they claimed she might have gone for a walk and said they would video call the family members in the evening. On Monday, they said they have only an entry of her admission, but no details of her discharge, although claiming it happened days ago,” he said.

While the family has approached the commissioner of police (CP), they said cops were initially reluctant to even take down the complaint. Advocate Amar Jadhav, who is representing the family, shared, “Shivajinagar police were not ready to accept our plaint initially, as they said it’s not in their jurisdiction. It was only when they got a call from the CP’s office that the missing person complaint was taken down.”

The kin also approached Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Shivajinagar constituency, Siddharth Shirole, asking for help. Shirole has further raised the issue with the municipal commissioner and Mayor, asking them to look into the matter and help the family find the woman, as well as find out what went wrong, to resolve the issue.

Confirming the gigantic blunder, PMC additional commissioner Rubal Agarwal said she will look into this personally and has already issued orders to investigate. She added, “I learnt about the incident from the PMC chief and have issued probe instructions. The agency looking over administration of the facility took up the task on September 9. The present agency informed us that the old management discharged the patient on September 5, which they saw on CCTV footage. I will get more details on Tuesday.”