Ambulance, morgue staff ask Rs 80,000 from bereaved man in Karnataka

BENGALURU: As if the double blow of having to lose one's wife and a daughter in a horrific road accident was not enough, conservationist Sunil Kumar also had to deal with an ambulance driver and morgue workers who tried to fleece him of Rs 80,000 in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Since the accident, a deathly silence has enveloped Villa 262 in Concorde Nappa Valley, Tharalu village, for more than three weeks now.

Even the occasional giggles of 10-month-old Grahita from her playpen have failed to move her 51-year-old father, Sunil, who lost wife Gayathri Kumar, 48, an IT professional, and elder daughter Samatha GS Kumar, 15, when a concrete mixer, reportedly with a sleep-deprived driver at the wheel, fell on their Hyundai Venue, crushing both mother and daughter to death.
'Health department should immediately address 'feed-on-dead' attitude of hosp staffers'
According to Sunil, after the accident, while an ambulance driver took Rs 21,000 to carry the bodies from Anekal Government Hospital, morgue workers demanded another Rs 60,000 to release the autopsy certificates. It was only upon a senior police officer's intervention that Sunil was saved from coughing up money for the autopsy reports.
Promising to carry out a detailed inquiry into the incident, Dr Indira Kabade, District Health Officer, Bengaluru Urban, told TOI. It is very hurtful that a grieving man had to go through such an experience. Some of the people who are contract staff at hospitals don't realise the sensitivity of such matters."
At 7.49am on February 1, Sunil was at home when he received an SMS alert that the airbags of his car had been deployed at Byalamara Doddi on Kaggalipura-Bannerghatta Road. "My wife had taken the car to drop our elder daughter. When I received the text message, I realised that something was wrong. Taking one of my neighbours along, I rushed to the spot. What I witnessed was something that no one should see," recalled Sunil, as tears rolled down his cheeks.
"I screamed out to people who were trying to capture the accident scene on their phone cameras, saying it was my family that was trapped in the vehicle," Kumar said, adding that his right to grieve in dignity was lost.
Little did he know then that his ordeal had only begun. "The driver of the ambulance that came to move the bodies from the hospital after the postmortem demanded Rs 21,000. Otherwise, the vehicle won't move, he threatened. My friends pooled in the money and paid the driver," said Sunil. Later, at the mortuary, the employees allegedly demanded Rs 60,000 to release the postmortem certificates - Rs 40,000 for the adult and Rs 20,000 for the child. When he confronted them, the mortuary workers made a snide remark, saying he would claim all the money through insurance anyway, Sunil added.
On February 22, as many as 21 days after the accident, Sunil finally received the certificates from the mortuary, only after a senior police official intervened. "No amount of compensation can bring back Gayathri and Samatha. My only request to the authorities is that Kaggalipura-Bannerghatta Road used by families and schoolgoing children should be free of heavy vehicles. The health department should immediately address this 'feeding over the dead' attitude at hospitals, especially Anekal Government Hospital, considering the plight of grieving families," the Bengalurean said.