Gujarat Covid patient dies after assault by hospital staff, video goes viral

GANDHINAGAR: The Rajkot Civil Hospital is courting yet another controversy after a video of its staff beating up a Covid patient surfaced on Thursday. The patient –– Prabhashankar Patil (38) –– died on Thursday evening.

Rajkot Civil Hospital Superintendent has issued a video statement stating that the patient was Covid positive and had hypertension and diabetes. He claimed that Patil, according to the psychiatry department, was in a state of delirium and had been pulling out riles tubes and other insertions. He was tugging at his clothes and was at risk of harming himself and others. The attending staff was merely trying to restrain him, he said.

However, the videos show a security staff trampling on the patient with his boots while a paramedic pins down the patient by placing his knees on his chest.


Soon, a second video statement was issued by Patil’s younger brother , who alleged that his brother did not die of corona but due to the hospital’s negligence. “They said that he was mentally unstable, but he was not. He used to work and had his kidney operated at Giriraj Hospital on September 6 and two days later, he was corona-positive. Giriraj Hospital told us to admit him to Civil Hospital as they were not treating Covid patients. Once we admitted him to Civil Hospital, we spoke to him twice and later had no contact with him. Every time we tried to talk to him through doctors, we were told that he was not in a position to talk,” he said.