An eight-year-old Dalit girl lost her life at Muzaffarpur Sadar Hospital in Bihar after the doctors there allegedly refused to attend her in the absence of a Covid-19 test report.

The child — Radha Kumari — was choking after swallowing a litchi seed on Wednesday. Her father Sanjay Ram, of Raghunathpur Madhuban village under Kudhani block in Muzaffarpur district rushed her to the government hospital, but what happened was unimaginable for him.

“She was choking after swallowing the litchi seed. I immediately took her to the local government hospital at Kudhani where the doctor referred her to Muzaffarpur Sadar Hospital. I rushed to the emergency facility there, but the doctors refused to treat her and asked me to bring her corona test report,” Sanjay alleged.

“All my entreaties to the doctors went in vain. They said they would not touch her till her corona test report comes. They made me run from one counter to another for more than an hour with my daughter on my shoulder. By the time I got the report, she was no more,” an inconsolably weeping Sanjay told reporters.

Though Sanjay returned to his village, his allegations raised questions of ethics, duty and responsibility of doctors in such a situation during the ongoing second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Muzaffarpur civil surgeon S.K. Chaudhary termed the allegations serious and asserted that the primary duty for doctors posted at any hospital’s emergency was to save lives instead of focusing on various protocols.

However, Chaudhary conducted a half-hearted enquiry, asserted that the child was already dead when she arrived at the hospital, and absolved the doctors of any negligence.

“I called the two doctors posted in Muzaffarpur Sadar Hospital’s emergency on that day and conducted an enquiry in my chamber to know the truth about the incident. That patient’s name was not registered at the registration counter of the hospital,” Chaudhary told The Telegraph on Friday. However, he did not check whether any Covid test was done in the name of Radha at the hospital. He also did not check the CCTV footage.