Pauri: In moments when noise from the HNB Hospital in Pauri dies, mostly late at night, a feeble cry can be heard on the ground floor corridor. The faint squeals come from a 62-year-old mentally ill and disabled woman who has been in the facility’s “psychiatric” unit for the past two years.
The frail woman, known only as Roshni, was found lying naked, hungry and shivering by Timed of India when this correspondent visited her in a ward that was officially closed after the hospital’s lone psychiatrist resigned in October.
With police unable to trace her family and the Nari Niketan refusing admission because she is “old and in need of assistive care”, the Uttarakhand government does not know what to do with her.
The case record of Roshni, a copy of which is with the TOI, mentions that she was hit by a bus in December 15 2015 in Srinagar and was admitted as a “destitute” in the HNB Hospital’s emergency room the next day. Doctors who treated her had prescribed “long term custodial care in a mental health facility”. The woman has severely deformed hands and feet and is unable to move without support.
During an internal communication that took place on February 9, 2016 between two separate units of the hospital, doctors refused to keep her in the functional wards by stating she was “not their patient”. In the absence of a regular physician, it is the sweepers and ward boys now who administer “medicines” and food to Roshni.
Hospital authorities said that both the Nari Niketan and an old age home in Bageshwar have rejected her because she is disabled. “She could not have been accommodated in the Nari Niketan because there isn’t enough staff there to take care of her. She needs special care. The woman was also sent to a shelter home in Bageshwar,” said district probation officer, Dehradun, Meena Bisht.
The Nari Niketan, incidentally, houses 111 mentally ill inmates of various age groups, informed an official.
District social welfare officer of Bageshwar, Nandan Singh, denied being approached either by police or hospital authorities to admit Roshni in the Bageshwar shelter home. He, however, said, “If she is disabled, we will not be able to keep her because we do not have staff to take care of people with special needs.”
When contacted, sub-divisional magistrate of Srinagar, Mayadutt Joshi, said, “We had sent the woman to the Nari Niketan and were under the impression that she has been living there. We will rehabilitate her at the earliest.”
Dr Ravinder Kumar Bisht, medical superintendent of HNB Hospital, said, “We have given her as much care as it has been possible. We are hopeful that she will be rehabilitated soon.”