Elderly COVID Patient Found Dead In SCB Toilet, Cuttack Police On The Case

Cuttack: Police have started probing the death of a 73-year-old COVID patient at the premier SCB Medical College and Hospital in the city.

The patient, Dhruba Charan Behera, was missing from his bed for two hours and later found lying inside a toilet, his son told in his police complaint.

The son, Ramachandra, said his father was admitted to the second unit of the COVID ward at SCB MCH on Monday. He was reportedly on oxygen support.

On Tuesday evening, Ramachandra couldn’t contact his father over phone to enquire about his health. He called a patient’s attendant in the ward. The person informed him that his father was not on his bed.

In panic, Ramachandra and his sister rushed the hospital and frantically searched for their father.

“We found him lying on the toilet floor inside the ward. We immediately lifted him and called the doctors. However, they declared him dead,” Ramachandra was quoted as saying by The New Indian Express.

He also alleged that his father had died due to the medical negligence of hospital staff. “My father was left unattended even though he was on oxygen support. Had an attendant been there, he would perhaps had not been allowed to go to the toilet alone and been alive,” he added.

Mangalabag police said they have registered Ramachandra’s complaint. The postmortem report is awaited for further investigation into the matter, police added.