The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Heartrending scenes in hospital

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 27, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Heartrending scenes in hospital

By R. Sujatha

The Union Ministers, Mani Shankar Iyer and Dayanidhi Maran, looking at bodies in the Government Royapettah Hospital on Sunday. — Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

CHENNAI, DEC. 26. It was about 11.30 a.m. on "Black" Sunday. More and more bodies were being brought to the Government Royapettah Hospital (GRH).

A miserable scene unfolded. Parents ran in and out of the mortuary screaming the names of their loved ones. Some had lost just one member in the family; in other families there were multiple deaths.

Chennai's fisherfolk were the most affected. Women walked into the hospital even as late as 7 p.m. looking for a lost father or a husband.

Prasad, who is on an official visit to the city, had brought his family from Hyderabad. His seven-year-old son and wife had gone for a morning walk. The boy's body was washed away. "It was by luck that we found him," Mr. Prasad said. The body was taken to Apollo Hospitals. Though he had been given the death certificate, he was asked to register his son at the GRH. His body was in the ambulance till 8 p.m. as VIPs visited the hospital.

Semblance of solace

Though by noon most bodies had been brought and many identified, they were not handed over to the relatives. People were hanging around the mortuary even as more relatives poured in.

Most people seemed to find a semblance of a solace seeing others who too were grieving. "Whom did you lose?" they asked one another, trying to console themselves.

Elderly relatives of J. Anuradha (24) and M. Varshita (5), who killed while taking a morning walk, came from Villivakkam on hearing the news. "We don't know where the relatives are. They were in their grandma's house."

Pankajavalli (40) had gone for a walk at Tiruvanmiyur. She died after she was caught in a fishing net. Two others who accompanied her were declared stable in the intensive care unit of EVS Kalyani Hospital on Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai.

Most relatives did not know what procedure the hospital would adopt. They hoped that no autopsy would be done. It was only around 1.30 p.m., when the Public Works Department Minister, O. Paneerselvam, and the Finance Minister, C. Ponnaiyan, who came to visit the hospital, were the relatives told that no autopsy would take place and that bodies would be handed over after identification.

Later, the Director of Medical Services made an official announcement. Even then, the first bodies were handed over only around 3.30 p.m. Some parents who tried to take away their children were asked to return the bodies.

"Have they begun giving the bodies?" the relative of a deceased was heard asking others crowding the entrance of the mortuary.

Most people survived on the kindness of the nearby shopkeepers who distributed water packets, coffee and bananas.

A fisherwoman in tears, who came around 6.30 p.m., was looking for her father who had been missing since morning. Another man waited as the ambulances continued to come in carrying the dead. A family brought back its dead breadwinner to the morgue because there was too much water in its house. The members said they would take the body back tomorrow, when the water recedes. Till 8 p.m., 47 of the 65 bodies brought to the hospital were identified.

Union Ministers T.R. Baalu, Dayanidhi Maran and Mani Shankar Aiyar visited the hospital.

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