DEHRADUN: Unable to afford the exorbitant fee charged by the ambulance service, a woman was forced to travel 195 kilometre from her village to Haldwani by tying the body of her brother, who died by suicide, to the roof of a taxi.
According to sources, after the post-mortem, the ambulance service demanded Rs 12,000 to transport the body from Haldwani’s mortuary to their hometown of Berinag. Shivani could not afford and her requests for assistance went unheard. Ultimately, she had no choice but to tie her brother’s body to the roof of a taxi for the journey home.
Gaurav Joshi, the officer in charge of the Haldichaur police outpost at the Lal Kuan police station, stated that upon receiving the information, they rushed the unconscious Abhishek to the Sushila Tiwari Government Hospital in Haldwani.
Govind Prasad and his wife supported their daughter Shivani in moving to Halduchaur for work and sent their 20-year-old son, Abhishek Kumar, to join her. Shivani recounted, “On Friday morning, we went to work together, but Abhishek returned home citing a headache. When I came back for lunch, I found him missing and noticed a strange smell of medicine in his room.” He was later discovered lying near the railway tracks close to their home. Abhishek was taken to Dr. Sushila Tiwari Government Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.