Calcutta, Dec. 11: The executive who was in charge of AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, on Thursday night told The Telegraph today that he had made "all the calls" he should have made after he was informed of the basement fire. Sources familiar with AMRI said Sajid Hossain's first call would have been to Preeta Banerjee, the vice-president in charge of the hospital's administration, without whose approval no employee would call either police or the fire brigade. Preeta was at the police headquarters at Lalbazar this afternoon and was questioned for almost three hours. She was allowed to leave late in the afternoon, possibly because the police are not supposed to question a woman after sunset. Another official disclosed to this paper that the fire started in the cotton stocks in the basement pharmacy. The fire was first noticed by a pharmacy assistant who alerted the maintenance staff, said the official who did not want to be identified. The other vice-president (operations), Rajesh Parekh, was questioned till late in the evening. However, a source close to Preeta appeared to contradict Hossain's version. The source said Preeta got the first call from the hospital's telephone operator at 3.58am. "The operator was very scared and told her there was a fire. Preeta called the assistant general manager, maintenance, Sanjib Pal, who told her the fire services control room was not responding to calls. So she called up the hospital's fire officer, Shaktipada Deb, a former fire services official, and told him to use his contacts," the source said. According to official records, the fire services department got the first alert at 4.08am on Friday, not from the hospital, but from the Lalbazar control room. The fire is believed to have been first detected around 2.15am. According to the hospital's fire emergency drill, the maintenance staff should call the security and the security should alert their boss and the night administrator. "I made all the calls that were necessary after the fire broke out. The truth will emerge during the course of the police investigation," Hossain said today. Asked if he had also called the fire services, he hung up. Hospital sources claimed Hossain had made several calls to 101, the fire service emergency, before calling Preeta. They claimed that he had also called the police headquarters and Lake police station — less than 500 metres away — and received assurance of help. The police denied the claim. None of the hospital sources, however, would confirm when these calls were made. However, some insisted that all calls would be proved in court through records. The police said today that they had got a lone alert over 100, around 4.06am, after which the fire brigade was alerted. Lake police station said it was first alerted about the fire by the police headquarters at 4.10am. "Several minutes after our personnel had left for AMRI following the Lalbazar alert, we got a call from an AMRI official," an officer said. A senior fire official said the possibility of a call to the emergency number going unanswered was remote. "Our control room is always manned," he said. Police and fire personnel expressed surprise about calls being made only on the emergency numbers, saying officials of an old establishment such as AMRI should have been aware of the direct numbers of the nearest fire station, at Kalighat, about 4km away. BSNL sources said that even if someone had dialled 101, there was no way the call could be traced as it didn't connect. "A call is not registered unless the line connects. Or the landline, where the call was made, has to have a caller ID," said a BSNL official. A source said the phones at the fire service control room were not fitted with caller identification devices. The hospital has been accused of not calling the police and the fire brigade even long after the fire had been detected. Its guards had prevented people from the neighbourhood from entering the premises to help the patients, 90 of whom died, choked by poisonous fumes. The hospital had initially claimed that the fire was detected only around 3.30am. The police today said that from calls made among themselves by AMRI staff, it was apparent that the fire had started between 2.15am and 2.30am. "The chain of events has been almost established," said an officer. During interrogation, Preeta allegedly failed to explain why she did not make a call to the fire brigade even after being informed of the fire. "She made several phone calls to other officials and also spoke to a few directors after being informed of the fire," the source close to Preeta said. A police officer said Preeta tried to give them the impression that she had not been properly briefed about the fire by the hospital official who called her. The police then asked her why she had called up the other senior officials and some of the directors after the call if she felt the fire was not that serious. "We are examining her call records to find out when exactly she had received the call from the hospital and whom she called immediately after that," an officer said. "Talking separately to Preeta and (VP operations) Parekh we have been able to establish the broad chronology of events," he added. Preeta, hospital sources said, was in charge of maintenance, food and beverages, housekeeping, security and biomedical equipment. Hossain is among the three night managers at AMRI Hospitals. A night manager is in charge of the hospital during the night. According to the norms of AMRI, in case of operational problems, the night manager should call Preeta and in case of medical issues, the medical superintendent, Suman Ghosh, has to be informed. Issues relating to finance, like problems over bills, are dealt with by Parekh. All three report to the board of directors. Back to basics of basement
Hospitals in hurry to clean up act | | TAMAGHNA BANERJEE, ZEESHAN JAWED AND SUMANTA ROY | Some top hospitals in town were seen reducing basement clutter on Sunday, as much for the sake of safety as in anticipation of a sudden fire inspection in the wake of the AMRI tragedy. It isn't illegal to use the basement of a building for any purpose as long as the stipulated safeguards are in place, though much of the excess material that tumbled out of the underground closets of the hospitals appeared to be inflammable. The list ranged from unused furniture to stacks of files stashed into cartons. If the reputable hospitals were being careful, a couple of nursing homes appeared nonchalant. Metro did a round of the city's health care circuit to find out who had learnt a lesson from the avoidable tragedy at AMRI Hospitals and who hadn't. Where: Belle Vue Clinic, Loudon Street When: 3.45pm What we saw: Workers were found removing discarded furniture from the basement and loading them on one of the three vans parked behind the main building. The removed items included gas cylinders, heaps of plywood, broken doors, medicine cartons, computer monitors and TVs, broken furniture, mattresses and bed sheets. Plywood was stacked outside the cafeteria on the ground floor, which shares the path to the basement staircase. Files and bundles of bed sheets were shifted out of the hospital premises on handcarts. P. Tondon, the CEO of Belle Vue Clinic, admitted that the clean-up was triggered by the tragedy at AMRI. "The AMRI incident has opened our eyes. Material left behind by the developer who built our second building were lying inside the basement for quite some time. I called up the owner of the firm after Friday's incident and asked him to remove everything, but he did not do it. So I asked our staff to remove them today." Where: Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre, Rawdon Street When: 2.45pm What we saw: The hospital has two basements. The upper basement houses the Genomee fertility clinic that comprises three consulting rooms, a laboratory, an ultrasound unit, a female recovery room, the maintenance department, office space, an operation theatre and a lounge for visitors. A 60-strong team of employees work in that section. The lower basement houses the entire administrative department, which usually functions with skeletal staff on a weekend. On Sunday, the department was buzzing with employees, many of them engaged in removing documents, computers, televisions, furniture and other office stationary out of the block. Some hired workers were seen moving furniture out of some rooms. "We are expecting an inspection," an employee said, requesting anonymity. The director of Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre, P.L. Mehta, said the hospital had nothing to fear, having applied for and received "all the necessary permissions". So was Sunday's basement cleaning a routine exercise? "I don't know if anything was shifted out of the facilities in our basement on Sunday," he told Metro. Where: Calcutta Mercy Hospital, Park Street When: 3.10pm What we saw: The basement houses the pharmacy, kitchen, personnel department, a portion of the administrative department and a storeroom. On Sunday afternoon, a Matador was parked on the hospital premises to carry away discarded computer monitors, televisions, wooden tables, broken chairs and sheets of plywood that workers had brought out of the storeroom. "Our bosses have asked us to rid the basement of trash by evening. They say that police will inspect this hospital on Monday," a Group D employee said, hours before word came that the authorities had decided to temporarily suspend services except for those already undergoing treatment there. A spokesperson for the hospital cited an internal problem for the decision not to take in new patients. "We had been trying to clear the basement for a long time. Today, when we were removing items from the kitchen, union members prevented us from doing so and even assaulted some officials." Union members alleged that the kitchen at the basement had been stashed with highly inflammable goods for years. "We wanted the fire department to come for an inspection and find out how fire-prone the basement is. That is why we tried to prevent this sudden attempt to make everything look tidy," a union leader said. Where: Divine Nursing Home, Beleghata When: 12.50pm What we saw: The windows of the four-storey hospital are not only sealed but also have grilles, almost ruling them out as possible escape routes in the event of a fire. A fire department official said grilles on windows and balconies in hospitals were a no-no. "If a blaze like the one at AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria were to occur here, how would we rescue those inside? We would need to use gas-cutters, which isn't possible in a fire situation," he said. Divine is a popular nursing home in the Phoolbagan-Beleghata-Kankurgachhi-Salt Lake belt. The nursing home was set up in 1986, while its paediatric unit — Divine Child Care — was built five years ago. Divine Nursing Home and Divine Child Care, on opposite sides of the road, don't have emergency exits and use one entrance each. Plastic packets containing waste are dumped next to the washrooms on the ground floor. Look up and you find loose electric wiring hanging precariously. A doctor previously attached to the nursing home said neither unit had staff trained to handle fire emergencies. "The guards and male attendants would need to use the fire extinguishers and evacuate trapped people in an emergency," he said. Where: Daffodil Nursing Home, Lake Town When: 3.30pm What we saw: The rear part of the ground floor resembles what the basement of AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria would have looked like before Friday's blaze. The approximately 1,000sq ft space is used to stack unused chairs, broken doors and doorframes, and old equipment. A source in the nursing home said the building did not have even basic equipment like water hydrants, sprinklers and fire alarms. "The stairs are not more than five feet wide. The hospital is in a building designed to be a residence. The general wards don't even have fire extinguishers," he said. Tears of despair and outrage for the dear and departed |  | | Indrani Deb Barman in front of her sister Chandrani Saha's picture in their Behala house. Picture by Amit Datta. lDid you lose a loved one in the AMRI tragedy. Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com |
'My sister was sleeping heavily sedated' Chandrani Saha, 36, a senior scientific officer in a research firm, and her husband Nilabjo Haldar were injured in a road accident at Singur while driving back to the city from Mukutmanipur on December 7. She had fractured her legs, he his arm. They were admitted to a hospital in Singur before being shifted to AMRI Dhakuria. A sedated Chandrani died in Friday's fire, abandoned in the ITU. Nilabjo managed to make it to safety. On Sunday, Chandrani's sister Indrani Deb Barman, a Bangalore-based IT professional, performed her last rites at their Sashi Bhushan Mukherjee Road house in Behala. Later, Indrani spoke to Metro sitting near her sister's picture, struggling to hold back tears. Chandrani and I had lost our mother as children, so we were exceptionally close. I was the one who had insisted that she be admitted to AMRI. I came down to Calcutta as soon as I heard about the accident and would not let her get treated at Singur or anywhere else. I thought AMRI would take good care of her. She was admitted to ITU bed No. 2410 on December 7 at 4.30pm. We were asleep at home when Nilabjo called at dawn and informed us of the fire. His arm had been operated on the day before. He was in a semi-conscious state on the second floor of the hospital. When he realised there was a fire, he took off the oxygen mask and the drips and ran out of the building. Remembering that Chandrani was on the fourth floor, he tried to go back and save her but was not allowed to. That's when he called us in a state of panic and confusion. Chandrani was sleeping heavily sedated and I don't know whether she even realised that there was a fire. Even if she had, she would not have been able to run with a fractured leg. My friends, relatives and I rushed to the hospital but were not allowed in before 11-11.30am. Till then, the family members of patients were forced to be mere spectators to the disaster. The firemen and the hospital personnel were only interested in saving the property. They made little effort to evacuate the helpless patients. In fact, the ITU staff ran to safety, leaving the patients behind. Residents of the neighbouring areas had to keep asking the rescue personnel to break the glass panes. All through, the hospital staff told me that my sister was fine, though she had already died. We were asked to search for our relatives from a pile of bodies. I managed to speak to the chief minister when she visited the hospital. I asked why I had to lose my sister. She could only say that she had cancelled AMRI's licence. But she was a big help otherwise. She got the bodies released fast, otherwise there would have been a bigger mess. My sister's body was in SSKM. 'My father died... just like in a concentration camp'  | | Jaharlal Ganguly |
Rina Ganguly, the widow of 67-year-old Jaharlal Ganguly, is trying hard to be brave. "We are a jolly family. Friends drop in all the time. Only now my husband is not there anymore," she said on Sunday as calmly as she could. Sitting in their flat off James Long Sarani, her son Raja Ganguly, zonal sales manager at a private firm, spoke about his father' s death. I cannot get over the fact that my father survived a road accident only to die at AMRI this way. Eight months ago, a motorcycle had hit my father. Most people do not survive such an accident. But ever the fighter, he bounced back. He was bed-ridden for three months. Since his recovery he was shaky about going out of the house. After returning from a wedding on December 7, he suffered cerebral haemorrhage. As I was in Mumbai on an official tour, my colleagues helped him get admitted to AMRI Hospitals because a doctor of our choice works at there. When I returned from Mumbai, doctors told me that he had a 50 per cent chance of making it. But since he was restless, they had to tie his hands and legs to the bed in the ICU. That's how he died. He could not have moved, even if he had tried. I was spending the December 8 night in the hospital lobby with my brother-in-law. We called the ICU at 3.30am and were told that my father was doing well. Just then, we saw guards running with fire extinguishers. I realised there was a fire and ran to the fourth floor and told the ICU staff that I would like to take away my father. They told me that patients are always safe in an ICU and I believed them. I went down and was not allowed to go up after that. The firemen were more interested in saving the hospital property than lives. The rescue operation began too late. The poor hospital infrastructure and lack of co-ordination between the administration and rescue personnel caused my father's death. I will always live with the knowledge that my father died in a hospital with his limbs tied, just like in a concentration camp. Only the chief minister seemed to care about us. She helped us claim the bodies of near ones fast after the post-mortem. 'We had to find her in a pile of bodies'  | | Anita Roy at her home on Sunday. Her mother-in-law Dipti's picture is in front of her. (Amit Datta) |
Anita Roy is angry. Medical neglect had claimed her husband 10 years ago. On Friday, her 81-year-old mother-in-law, Dipti Roy, died in the fire, the victim of another kind of neglect. Dipti had been admitted to AMRI after she developed chest congestion, as the family did not want to take a chance. Sitting in their Regent Estate flat, Anita recounted the terrible consequence. My mother-in-law was a cancer patient and would go to the AMRI oncology department for treatment. I always felt the hospital was unsafe. The lack of fire exits and the inadequate number of sprinklers had always bothered me. Why did not the fire department ensure that it complied with the safety standards? Nobody bothered to inform us after the fire broke out. Is it not the hospital's job to inform the relatives of patients about a fire? We were alerted by relatives who had switched on the TV in the morning. After reaching the hospital, we realised that little effort had been made to rescue the ICU and ITU patients. My mother-in-law, who was in the ITU, was to be released on Saturday. But as fate would have it, we had to find her in a pile of bodies at SSKM Hospital a day before. The sight and smell would haunt me and my sons all our lives. But nobody cared. Is this what our health system has come to? The political leaders were there to gain mileage out of the tragedy. Except the chief minister, nobody was helping the victims. My two sons are so angry that they do not want to meet anybody now. A lot will be written about AMRI now but then things will go back to normal. Only we will have to live with our void and nightmares. 'He would have been fine in a few days'  | | Madhusudan Hazra | Madhusudan Hazra, 72, had to be admitted to hospital twice in a serious condition so when he developed breathing trouble earlier this month, his family members decided to be cautious and took him to AMRI Dhakuria. Sitting in their Kasba flat, his son Santanusaid he would always regret the decision. My father used to have problems breathing because water accumulated in his lungs. On earlier occasions, he had been admitted in the main building. This time, he was on the third floor of the annexe building. The illness was not serious and he would have been fine in a few days. On Friday morning, I received a call from my brother, who stays in our other home near the hospital. He told me that a big fire had broken out and many patients were feared dead. It was about 6.30am. No one from the hospital had bothered to call us. I rushed to the hospital with my family and my 60-year-old mother. There was utter chaos and confusion. No official from the hospital could say where the patients were. I somehow managed to push through the crowd. Boys from the neighbouring slums rescuing patients took me to the third floor up the staircase. I could not enter the ITU as there was thick smoke between the staircase and the room's door. I had to come back without even making an attempt to see if my father was alive. Firemen working there told me that there was little chance of anyone in that ward surviving. They requested me to go down as I could fall sick. It was too hot and I was forced to go down. A couple of hours later I found my father among the bodies in the main building. We were prepared for another round of chaos while receiving the body at SSKM but the chief minister's presence made things easier for us." 'My father did not deserve to die like this'  | | Urmimala Mazumdar at home. (Sayantan Ghosh) | Kamal Mazumdar, 62, a resident of Jodhpur Park, had been admitted to AMRI, Dhakuria on December 5 for radiation therapy to treat cancer. The pharmacist died on the second floor of Annexe 1, while his family members — wife Madhumita, daughters Romilla Dutta and Urmimala — tried in vain to get to him. Urmimala, 26, recounts her nightmare: My father was suffering from cancer for the last three years. He was going to AMRI every day for radiation therapy but it was taking a toll on his health so we decided to admit him on December 5. My sister and her husband came down from Delhi because we had decided that we would all be together when he went through his treatment. Around 6.30am, we got a call from my aunt saying that she had heard there was a fire at AMRI. I frantically started calling the hospital landlines and helplines but no one answered. I rushed to the hospital.  | | Kamal Mazumdar |
There was complete chaos. There were bodies being pulled out. We didn't know if they were dead or alive. I spotted the male attendant my father had but he disappeared in the crowd. There was almost no one from the hospital there and people had started vandalising the building. There was one list that was being circulated repeatedly without any updates. When it was announced that people were being transferred to different hospitals, we all decided to spread out and look for my father. I ended up going to SSKM but we were not being allowed near the bodies. When Mamata Banerjee came, I went to her for help. She told me that it would take some time to identify the bodies and that she was arranging for coloured photographs to be taken so that it could be done faster. I don't know when we would have found my father if it hadn't been for her help. We got his body around 3.30pm. My father did not deserve to die like this. The hospital staff had been calling up my aunt earlier, asking if we had arranged for the money needed for the treatment, but no one bothered to inform us that a fire had broken out or to give us basic information about the whereabouts of the patient. I share this grief with all the people who have lost their loved ones. But the emptiness inside me will never be filled…. I am the one who lost a father. 'He could not shout for help and he could not move' Puranmal Agarwal, 72, was battling cancer for the past one-and-a-half years. After treatment in Mumbai and then Apollo Hospitals in Calcutta, the Agarwal family, who are in the jewellery business, shifted Puranmal to AMRI. He was beginning to show signs of recovery…. Surrounded by relatives in their 29A Ballygunge Park flat on Sunday,Hemant Agarwal, 25, spoke about losing his grandfather.  | | Puranmal Agarwal |
My grandfather had been in AMRI for the past one month. Just 15 days ago, he seemed to be responding to medicines and the ulcers on his throat were shrinking. For the first time in months we were hopeful. But… He had a room on the second floor and we had kept a private nurse with him. She called us around 3.45am saying that she thought there was a fire in the hospital and that there were no hospital attendants around. She asked us to come fast. My father, uncle, brother and I left for the hospital immediately and reached around 4.15am. The nurse then came out crying saying that she could not save him. She told us that she had gone out into the corridor around 3am saying that my grandfather was having trouble breathing as there was smoke. She was sent back to the room by the nurses on the floor who said there was nothing to worry about. This went on for half-an-hour and the last time she came out, she saw that the corridor was empty. That is when she called us. My grandfather was heavy and she could not carry him. He had almost lost his voice so he could not shout for help and he could not move. When we found him, his eyes were open. So he did not die in his sleep. He had choked…. I just hope that it was over quickly and that he did not have to suffer. Such a big hospital and there was no one there to help. The local people were helping a lot and then Mamata Banerjee came in and controlled the situation. I spoke to the chief minister five times. I am a common man but she helped. I don't think we would have got the body if it hadn't been for her. I hope some action will be taken so that the AMRI people can be taught a lesson. People go to hospitals to get care not to die. 'What shocked me is the callousness of the hospital'  | | Purnima Roy Chowdhury | Purnima Roy Chowdhury, 67, was admitted to the female neurology ward on the second floor of Annexe 1 of AMRI Dhakuria. The retired employee of the state health department lost her husband in 2008 and was barely able to walk. She underwent a spine surgery in the hospital on December 3. Her son Anirudhha Roy Chowdhury, a senior bank official, relived the nightmare at his Bijoygarh house: I was satisfied with the treatment my mother received at the hospital. She could not walk as her right leg was partially numb. She was undergoing physiotherapy after the surgery and was to be discharged in another three-four days. Doctors said she would be able to walk again. We were hopeful and happy. But suddenly everything changed. What shocked me is the callousness of the hospital administration. My mother was admitted there but they did not bother to inform me when the fire broke out. A friend called around 6.30am to tell me that a fire had broken out at AMRI. I, along with my friends, immediately headed for the hospital on two-wheelers. There was total chaos when we reached. No one knew where to direct us. No one had any information about the patients. The search for the body was just unbearable. We went to the AMRI hospitals at Salt Lake and Mukundapur but could not find her body. We returned to the Dhakuria hospital and approached police commissioner R.K. Pachnanda who was present there. He told us to go to SSKM Hospital, where we finally found her. The release of the body was smooth. When the hospital charges you so much, you expect basic safety measures to be in place. I had paid Rs 1.47 lakh as hospital charges. What did I get in return? There was no rescue system in place. The cabins were locked, suffocating glass rooms. Unfortunately, this realisation has come after everything has been lost. (As told to Chandreyee Chatterjee, Chandreyee Ghosh and Subhojoy Roy) Docs who lost all patients | | SANJAY MANDAL | Doctors are used to losing their battle against death but seldom do they lose all their patients together. Friday witnessed a rare tragedy at AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria as two senior doctors lost all 18 patients admitted under them. Metro speaks to the doctors. R.N. Bhattacharya, neurosurgeon This is worse than my worst nightmare. Twelve of my patients, who had complete faith in me, died in such a shocking manner, helpless, unable to move. Of the 12, six were in the high dependency unit, five in the neuro surgery intensive therapy unit and one in the intensive therapy unit — all on the fourth floor where most of the deaths had occurred. All the patients had undergone surgery. The condition of four was critical, while at least two were fit to be discharged. In fact, I had wanted to discharge them earlier but since they were from faraway districts, family members requested me to keep them for another couple of days. How I wish I had discharged them before. At least two more lives could have been saved. I got a call early on Friday and rushed to the hospital. I feared the worst when I learnt that most of the bodies were from the fourth floor. The fears came horribly true. What hurts me most is that most of the patients could have led a near-normal life. Jayanta Roy, neuro-medicine specialist I am not being able to sleep properly since Friday as the faces of the six patients under my treatment at AMRI keep haunting me. I spoke to two of them at 10pm on Thursday. All six had suffered stroke but overcame the crisis and were on their way to recovery. I was confident that all of them would have gone home. Two of them were admitted to the intensive care unit on the fourth floor. The other four were in the stroke unit of the second floor. None got any chance to escape the poison fume. The most trying task was to face the family members and console them. In fact, I needed to be consoled myself. I still can't come to terms with the fact that they had met with such a tragic end. Of the six, four underwent tracheotomy and were unable to speak. Only one was on life-support. On Thursday, I went to the ICU for my normal night round around 10pm. I spoke to junior doctors and gave instructions on the treatment of the middle-aged man on life-support. Then I went to the stroke unit on the second floor and spoke to the two patients. I asked them whether they had headache or any other problem. Both said they were fine. One of them, Parama Chakraborty, asked me when she would be discharged. I told her that she would go home soon. The next morning, around 4.30am, I received a call from the medical officer of the stroke unit and rushed to the hospital. After reaching the spot, I put on a surgical mask and tried to get in but could not go beyond the ground floor. I had called up Parama's husband on the way to hospital. She was shifted from the fire-affected annexe to the haemo-dialysis unit in the main building that had been vacated. I tried to resuscitate her but knew the efforts would not succeed. As more and more patients were being brought in, I had to help other doctors in the resuscitation procedure. I suddenly saw the lifeless body of another of my patient, N.C. Mog, in the operating theatre. Hectic day, early rest | | A STAFF REPORTER |  | | One of our readers, Arijit Patra, took the picture of a poster at AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria on Friday |
The six "high-profile" inmates at Lalbazar were allowed an "early rest" after a hectic day at court on Saturday. They were sent to the central lock-up around 8.30pm, earlier than usual, but not before they were served food from outside. The six AMRI directors — R.S. Goenka, Manish Goenka, S.K. Todi, Ravi Todi, Prashant Goenka and Dayanand Agarwal — spent the rest of the night huddled inside the lock-up, speaking in whispers. Earlier, while they were being brought to Lalbazar from the Alipore court, each was seen carrying a bottle of mineral water. Sunday began with a breakfast of tea and arrowroot biscuits. Nothing was wasted. "We have learnt that five of the six directors are diabetic but they didn't object to the sugary tea," said a Lalbazar officer. "All except Manish Goenka are on medication. They have been allowed to take medicines brought from home following the consent of the doctor who examined them after their arrest." Sources said what seemed to be the real challenge for the six was the toilet. "The accused are not used to the Indian toilets we have in the lock-up. The chest-high partitions in the toilets deny privacy to those inside. The taps are low to ensure no inmate commits suicide by hanging from them," said an officer. Around 9am, they were summoned by the officers of the detective department for questioning. The six were handed over a fresh set of clothes sent by their families on Sunday morning. The directors were interrogated one by one in the anti-dacoity section of the detective department. The six were served a "simple" lunch brought from outside. Sources said something "light and less spicy" was ordered keeping in mind their health. 'She could not speak, she was just coughing' |  | | Munmun Chakraborty's husband Subhashis, son Rishiraj and daughter Shivamrita at their Garfa home on Sunday. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta |
Munmun Chakraborty, 36, a mother of two and the lone earning member of her family (she ran a photo studio in Chetla), had been admitted to AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, with fractures in her leg and hipbone on December 2 after an auto-rickshaw accident. She underwent an ankle operation but was unable to move on her own till Thursday night, when her family last met her. Her husband, Subhashis, 42, who had received a frantic call from his wife at 4.21am on Friday urging him to come over and save her, is in shock. A singer who has been out of work for six years after something went wrong with his voice, he will have to bring up daughter Shivamrita, 11, and son Rishiraj, 2. Subhashis relived the hospital horror on Sunday, in their Garfa home…. I rushed to the hospital in a taxi within 15 minutes of getting her call. I called Munmun as soon as I got there. She received the call but she could not speak. She was just coughing. I told her to stay calm.  | | Munmun Chakraborty |
I knew she would not be able to get down from her bed. So I told her to cover her face with the blanket and to just hold on. I was coming to her, I told her. I was prevented by the security guards from entering the hospital and saving my wife. I will never know why. I literally pleaded with the guards but they wouldn't relent. By the time the crowd overpowered the guards and we entered the building, three hours after I had reached the spot, my wife had been choked to death in the orthopaedic wing on the second floor. Rishiraj last saw his mother in hospital last Sunday with her foot in a cast and he still thinks she is there. He keeps repeating "Ma-er pa kete gechhe tai hospital-e bendhe rekhechhe (Mother has cut her foot so they have kept her in hospital)". He keeps asking when she will come back home. When we brought her body home on Sunday, my son was asleep and we didn't wake him up. But my daughter Shivamrita saw the body with the face blackened and she just said, "This is not my mother". She has gone into a shell since. How will I bring them up without Munmun? The task seems impossible. My wife had repeatedly asked to be discharged but she was kept back on some pretext or the other. She was to be released on Friday but… My wife is gone but I will not give up the fight against the AMRI authorities. I have already lodged a complaint with the Lake police station. I will also file a case in the high court. 'Had he been in coma, he would not have felt the pain'  | | Animesh Chandra Dasgupta |
Animesh Chandra Dasgupta, 81, was in the intensive care unit on the fourth floor of Annexe I after suffering a cerebral attack in his Santiniketan home last month.Debabrata Dasgupta, son of the retired Oil India official, recounted the difficulties faced by the family in identifying and retrieving his father's body, in his Lake Gardens home on Sunday. The condition of my father had improved a bit on Thursday, prompting the authorities to move him to the general ICU from the Neuro ICU. That turned out to be not a good thing because had he been in coma, he would perhaps not have felt any pain in his final moments. We got the news a bit late as we haven't bought a TV in our Calcutta home. My brother-in-law Tapan Kumar Roy reached the hospital at 8.30am. It was very chaotic from the start with no information centre at AMRI. There were just four or five sheets hanging on the wall of the main building. My father's name was not on that list. On the second floor of the main building, Tapan found 35 dead bodies in one room without any name-tags but my father's body was not there either. Then they heard that some patients had been taken to AMRI's Mukundapur and Salt Lake hospitals. My son, Rudrashis, who was there with Tapan, said they didn't realise that they were taking only the dead to SSKM as oxygen masks were being put on the mouths of the dead as well. When we finally realised after a tour of the two other AMRI hospitals that my father must be no more, we tried to get into the SSKM morgue. That was at 10.45am, but were told to come back after noon as the autopsies were going on. Meanwhile the list of dead was increasing and a fear that someone else may have claimed my father's body was rising. We were finally able to identify the body at 6.30pm and leave the place at 7.30pm. 'We hope she did not feel much pain'  | | Papiya Banerjee |
Papiya Banerjee, 79, the first woman to complete her PhD in anthropology from Calcutta University, taught in that department till her retirement in the early 1990s. She had been admitted in the NICU on the fourth floor after suffering a cerebral attack on Tuesday night.Lopamudra, her daughter-in-law, spoke from their Prince Anwar Shah Road home. My father-in-law Amulya Ratan Banerjee, 82, is attached with the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratisthan, where he was the head of the genetic department. He has been lamenting for the last two days the decision to admit my mother-in-law to AMRI. She has suffered such attacks before and every time we took her to RKM Seva Pratisthan for treatment. But on Tuesday night, when she fell ill, there were no ICU beds available at the hospital. So, we took her to EEDF (Jodhpur Park) where too there was no ICU bed free. That's when we went to AMRI.  | Papiya Banerjee's husband Amulya Ratan and (right) son Arup Ratan at their Prince Anwar Shah
Road home on Sunday. (Bishwarup Dutta) |
We got information about the fire at 4.30am and reached the hospital within half-an-hour. Local residents had gathered at the spot but they were not being allowed in. Later, when they were able in, they did manage to save some patients. Around 10.30am, I thought I spotted my mother-in-law being carried away. But by the time we were able to reach the ambulance, they refused to open the door for us to have a look. So, we followed the ambulance to SSKM where we identified the body. Because she was hardly being able to respond, we are hoping that she did not feel much pain. But we can't really tell… (As told to Rith Basu) |
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