Amidst the coro­n­avirus scare, it will be un­for­giv­able not to re­view the af­ter­math of the anti-Mus­lim pogrom in Delhi in the last week of Feb­ru­ary 2020. While bod­ies of Mus­lims were be­ing dis­cov­ered from the drains of North East Delhi, Arvind Ke­jri­wal and his cab­i­net were in­au­gu­rat­ing low-floor buses in the city. The re­port by vol­un­teers of the Jan Swasthya Ab­hiyan who fa­cil­i­tated ac­cess to health­care for vic­tims of vi­o­lence be­tween 25 Feb­ru­ary to 1st March 2020 is a dev­as­tat­ing and dis­turb­ing ac­count of the role of the Delhi gov­ern­ment and a scathing blot on the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in Delhi who showed brazen bias in treat­ing and car­ing for in­jured Mus­lims brought to hos­pi­tals.

DUR­ING THE LAST WEEK OF FEB­RU­ARY 2020 IN THE IN­DIAN CAP­I­TAL DELHI, when young ac­tivists were fer­ry­ing the in­jured from one hos­pi­tal to an­other or from the af­fected ar­eas to the hos­pi­tals or from hos­pi­tals to the camps in their pri­vate cars, am­bu­lances were miss­ing from the gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tals of Delhi.  While peo­ple were dy­ing and the in­jured needed treat­ment and care, “in­jured had no means to reach hos­pi­tals even when they were able to es­cape the vi­o­lent mob alive.”

In times of war, we have the In­ter­na­tional Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross in many parts of the world. In times of in­ter­nal con­flicts in In­dia, we have no agency -na­tional or in­ter­na­tional ex­cept some good Samar­i­tans who risk their lives and care for the in­jured and pro­vide suc­cour to the fam­i­lies of those killed -at hos­pi­tals, homes and de­ten­tion cen­tres.

This au­thor was wit­ness to the state of af­fairs at the Lok Nayak Jayprakash Narayan Hos­pi­tal on the night of 25 Feb­ru­ary. I saw young ac­tivists fer­ry­ing the in­jured in their cars as no am­bu­lance was avail­able. While I was there, a pub­lic trans­port bus had to come to the door of the hos­pi­tal be­cause there was only one stretcher in the whole hos­pi­tal and that was per­haps at some nook from where the at­ten­dant could not re­trieve.  The young ac­tivists, who had been serv­ing the in­jured day and night said that “now it is dif­fi­cult to go in­side the hos­pi­tal as they have been ‘iden­ti­fied’ as those who care for un­known in­jured. I went in­side the hos­pi­tal, at­tempted to trace the in­jured, but could not iden­tify the nor­mal pa­tients from those who had been brought from the vi­o­lence-af­fected ar­eas. No spe­cial care was avail­able for those se­ri­ously in­jured and, in my pres­ence, a se­ri­ously in­jured per­son was be­ing shifted in an ac­tivist’s car to Guru Nanak Hos­pi­tal.

The Jan Swasthya Ab­hiyan re­port records that, “From the night of 24th Feb­ru­ary 2020 till 1 March 2020, North East Delhi has seen un­prece­dented vi­o­lence, di­rected es­pe­cially against mi­nori­ties in the ar­eas of Ashok Na­gar, Mustafabad, Jafrabad, See­lam­pur, Mau­jpur and Shiv Vi­har. Mosques have been at­tacked, houses burnt, and peo­ple hunted down in the streets by mobs.”

The Jan Swasthya Ab­hiyan re­port states that “From the 25th of Feb­ru­ary on­wards, we have been at­tempt­ing to co­or­di­nate the pub­lic health sys­tem re­sponse to sur­vivors and vic­tims of the vi­o­lence that erupted in North East Delhi. Far from pro­vid­ing heal­ing from the trauma that vic­tims have faced, we have found that the pub­lic health sys­tem it­self has ended up in­flict­ing sec­ondary trauma through acts of com­mis­sion and omis­sion.”

If you are weak-hearted, the bar­barism of the po­lice will make you throw up. Can you imag­ine that when con­fronted by a fam­ily about their miss­ing son, the po­lice per­son­nel on duty said, ‘he has been sent to a hos­pi­tal.” Upon be­ing asked, “Which one, there is no re­ply.” Later on, the par­ents learn that the per­son was dragged by the po­lice and given to the mobs. He is since miss­ing.

Mobs were block­ing am­bu­lances and the po­lice was stop­ping am­bu­lances and pri­vate ve­hi­cles in the name of ‘law and or­der’ till Jus­tice Murlid­har of the Delhi High Court passed an or­der in the dead of night on 26 Feb­ru­ary, di­rect­ing the po­lice to al­low the sick and in­jured to be treated and en­sure the move­ment of am­bu­lances.

“In three cases, the pa­tients re­ported be­ing at­tacked by the po­lice them­selves and beaten by lathis. In ad­di­tion to gun­shot wounds, sharp and blunt trauma, we were also told of and shown pic­tures of burns. One woman whose hus­band and daugh­ter are ad­mit­ted in a ter­tiary pub­lic hos­pi­tal told us that they heard a ruckus on the street, looked out to from their house to see what was hap­pen­ing, and acid was thrown on them by an un­known per­son in a mob.”

“When the two per­sons burnt by acid es­caped and hid in a mosque, they then walked al­most three kilo­me­tres to a point where they could find a pri­vate ve­hi­cle to get to the hos­pi­tal. The time-lapse be­tween the as­sault and reach­ing the hos­pi­tal was about 8 hours – pre­cious time in cases of burns.”

The Aam Aadmi Party Delhi gov­ern­ment did not do any­thing to dis­pel the fear lurk­ing in the minds of the fam­i­lies of the in­jured who were afraid to go to the Guru Tegh Ba­hadur Hos­pi­tal and the Lok Narayan Jay Prakash Hos­pi­tal for fear of pros­e­cu­tion by the po­lice fil­ing the medico-le­gal records while ad­mit­ting the in­jured at these gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tals.

How dis­gust­ing and sad the sit­u­a­tion was can be re­al­ized from the fact that “the fear of state in­sti­tu­tions ex­tends to am­bu­lances with fam­i­lies re­port­ing that they are re­luc­tant to call on 102 for gov­ern­ment am­bu­lances and in­stead feel safer ac­cess­ing pri­vate/ char­i­ta­ble hos­pi­tals us­ing pri­vate ve­hi­cles or auto rick­shaws.”

An­other per­ni­cious role was that of the at­tend­ing doc­tors. The Oath of Hip­pocrates was for­got­ten in let­ter and spirit. Doc­tors were neg­li­gent, bi­ased, care­free, hate-filled and even in a de­nial mode while at­tend­ing to the in­jured Mus­lims brought to them.

Will the In­dian Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion iden­tify the doc­tors about whom it is men­tioned in the re­port that, “Pa­tients and vol­un­teers both re­ported that in­jured per­sons be­ing called “ugravadi”  (mil­i­tant) and “atankvadi”  (ter­ror­ist) by doc­tors. Some said that when they re­quested prompt treat­ment, they were told “What will you do if we treat you? You will go back on the streets and be vi­o­lent”. These are also the ex­act words that a vol­un­teer heard when he was wait­ing to take de­tainees from the po­lice sta­tion to the hos­pi­tal. A vol­un­teer at a shel­ter who had been ac­com­pa­ny­ing vic­tims to seek care re­ported that doc­tors at ca­su­alty had asked some vic­tims the full form of NRC and CAA.”

“It is dis­turb­ing to see that health pro­fes­sion­als are us­ing this to shame pa­tients in ca­su­alty, who have suf­fered grave vi­o­lence.”

“In one case a fam­ily mem­ber of a de­ceased man told us that he brought his brother in law alive to the hos­pi­tal. He had been badly in­jured by a bul­let and the fam­ily had rushed him to GTB hos­pi­tal. Once he went into ca­su­alty, the fam­ily was just asked to wait out­side. When they tried to in­ter­vene, they were told, “Why don’t you only come and treat your rel­a­tive? Are you the doc­tor or me?” They kept wait­ing for many hours and fi­nally went in­side again to ask. They were told that their pa­tient is no longer in ca­su­alty. Then af­ter ask­ing around, they were told that the per­son is dead and the body has been shifted to the mor­tu­ary for post mortem.”

Re­act­ing to this re­port, a young Sikh ac­tivist, said, “These doc­tors sul­lied the name of Guru Tegh Ba­hadur while treat­ing the in­jured. Ei­ther the doc­tors should learn to be­have or the nomen­cla­ture of the Ninth Sikh Guru must be dropped from the gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tal.”

Nei­ther the po­lice nor the hos­pi­tals en­abled the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of miss­ing per­sons or the proper fil­ing of medico-le­gal doc­u­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing putting MLC num­bers and Post-mortems.

“The en­tire “health ma­chin­ery” of Aam Aadmi Par­ty’s Delhi gov­ern­ment seemed to be in tan­dem with the lumpen who was on a killing spree,” said the young Sikh ac­tivist.

The Jan Swasthya Ab­hiyan has sought hos­pi­tal li­ai­son of­fi­cers, spe­cial­ists like pae­di­a­tri­cians and gy­nae­col­o­gists and sur­geons, writ­ten or­ders from the health min­istry to com­plete doc­u­men­ta­tion, the ex­ten­sion of the Far­ishtey scheme to vic­tims of the vi­o­lence and the set­ting up of a toll-free num­ber, op­er­a­tional­ize mo­halla clin­ics in the af­fected ar­eas and arrange mo­bile vans with medics and para­medics.

If Ke­jri­wal will be free from low-floor buses and branch­ing out to give the Delhi model to Pun­jab, some of these may hap­pen. Die-hard fans of AAP and Arvind Ke­jri­wal may lis­ten to the full in­ter­view of so­cial ac­tivist Harsh Man­der.

Have things changed since the last two weeks? I do not see any ev­i­dence of that. The trust be­tween the peo­ple and the of­fi­cial ma­chin­ery has col­lapsed. I can­not help but re­call the bar­barism de­picted in the An­i­mal Farm by George Or­well. Oth­er­wise, I still look for some ex­pla­na­tion.

As the pogrom was un­der­way, the char­i­ta­ble hos­pi­tal -Al-Hind stood out as a shin­ing ex­am­ple of how to rise to the oc­ca­sion dur­ing dif­fi­cult times. They were the real Far­ishteys -an­gels, and not the pro­pa­gan­dist ones of the AAP gov­ern­ment in Delhi.