The parents of a Class XI student, who died in an accident, were allegedly beaten up by police at the Barasat Government Medical College and Hospital when they demanded to see their son’s body, the family has alleged.
Barasat police refuted the allegations and said they had to shift the teen’s parents from the hospital to the police station to “bring the situation under control”.
Asked why the family was denied their right to see the body at the morgue, an officer of the Barasat police directorate said it was done to “avoid any law and order situation”.
Angikaar Dasgupta, 17, a resident of Dum Dum was returning from his school in Salt Lake on Thursday evening. After he got off the bus at Haldiram’s on VIP Road, he was run over by the rear wheel of the same bus.
Bidhannagar police officers said he was taken to Charnock Hospital where he was “declared dead”. The boy was then shifted to Barasat State General Hospital for postmortem”.
Angikaar’s grandfather Goutam Sengupta alleged that the family learned about the accident from a rickshaw puller and not from the police.
“We first went to Charnock Hospital. By then Angikaar had been shifted to Barasat. We rushed to Barasat and found that my grandson had already been declared ‘brought dead’ even before four hours had passed. We could not even see in what condition he was brought to the hospital. Who knows if he had a chance to survive?” Sengupta alleged, who himself is a doctor.
The bereaved grandfather alleged that when his daughter and son-in-law tried to go to the morgue to see the body, they were stopped by the police.
“The police stopped us. As I am an old man, the police did not hit me. But they attacked my son-in-law. My daughter was assaulted when she tried to protect her husband. I cannot imagine this face of the police and what they did to the parents who have just lost a son,” Sengupta said.
Sprash Nilangi, the additional superintendent of the Barasat police district, said the superintendent of Barasat Government Medical College and Hospital had called the Barasat police station and sought their assistance after family members of Angikaar Dasgupta “turned aggressive”.
According to Nilangi, Dasgupta’s parents were caught in a heated argument with doctors and other employees of the hospital when a team from the police camp at the hospital went to the spot. “While the camp officer was trying to pacify the grieving mother, both the parents of the deceased turned aggressive and assaulted the police officer as well as other members of the hospital staff,” said Nilangi.
“The grieving parents were not subject to any assault by any police officer in the hospital or at the police station. In their hour of grief, our only attempt was to calm them down and hand them over to the relatives,” the officer said.
Earlier this month, police personnel were captured on CCTV thrashing with lathis the relatives of a woman who died at Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital after they allegedly failed to pacify the family who were angry with the attending doctors.
On Friday, the family also accused the hospital of “inhuman behaviour” and that the boy’s body had been rushed to the morgue.
Superintendent of Barasat Government Medical College and Hospital, Subrata Mondal said: “When the ECG confirmed the death, there was no logic to keep the body in the general ward.”
Reacting to allegations against the police that they took the boy to a “far off” hospital, Bidhannagar police joint commissioner (headquarters) Badana Varun Chandrasekhar said: “Traffic police personnel took him to (the nearby) Charnock Hospital. The doctor then declared him dead on arrival. Only then he was shifted to the government hospital in Barasat for post-mortem.”
