INDORE: Two more deaths have reportedly happened in the country’s cleanest city, Indore, due to contaminated water triggering a diarrhoea outbreak, taking the toll to 23 to date.
The latest to die was Bhagwandas Bharne (64), who was under treatment with ventilator support at the Bombay Hospital in Indore for around ten days. While he was initially admitted at another private hospital following the diarrhoeal symptoms, he was shifted later to the Bombay Hospital ten days back.
According to official sources at the Bombay Hospital, Bhagwandas, who was on ventilator support, was afflicted with multiple comorbidities, including a diabetic foot and gangrene, as well as multiple organ malfunctions. Despite all efforts at the ICU by doctors, he couldn’t survive and died on Monday.
Following Bhagwandas’s death, presently nine patients are admitted at the Bombay Hospital, three of whom continue to be in the ICU. “Four to five patients have responded well to the treatment by a dedicated team of doctors and have been shifted to the wards, following significant improvement,” a senior official at the Bombay Hospital told this newspaper.
Prior to Bhagwandas’s death, a 59-year-old woman, Kamla Bai (59), who was admitted at the state government’s MY Hospital following bouts of diarrhoea and vomiting on January 5-6, breathed her last at the same hospital on January 9. Her husband, Tulsiram, is a daily wage labourer who had moved to the Bhagirathpura locality just 20 days back, and his Aadhar card contained the address of Jeevan Ke Fel.
Both these deaths, however, are yet to be confirmed by Indore authorities, as contaminated water triggered diarrhoeal deaths in Bhagirathpura. Importantly, the Indore district administration has so far provided `2 lakh each in compensation to 18 bereaved families.
While the deaths continue to happen, the residents of Bhagirathpura locality shudder while remembering the last week of 2025, when the killer tragedy struck their congested locality.
“Decades back our locality was notorious as the den of listed goons and criminals, then it became home to workers of closed mills, most of whom turned into daily wage labourers or vehicle drivers. Now the same locality has become infamous for witnessing one of the worst killer diarrhoeal outbreaks in Indore,” said Rahul Panwar, who lost his father, Ashok Lal Panwar.