CHENNAI: Adikesavan had tested positive for Covid-19 on June 10, and a day later, corporation staff allegedly arrived at his house and took him to a government hospital. But the 72-year-old man has been missing for 12 days now. He does not even have a phone and there is no hospital record of his admission. His son has been frantically trying to trace him and has registered an FIR.
The patient is said to have been taken to a screening centre in Ekkaduthangal and subsequently to the Kilpauk Medical College Hospital along with five others. The son was under the impression Adikesavan was at KMC after a sanitary inspector confirmed that there was an elderly person. “We receive a list of people admitted to various government hospitals from the screening centre, and not from hospitals. Whenever his son asked me, I would contact a Covid-19 patient who was in the ward, where Adikesavan was supposed to have been admitted. The patient would say the elderly person was there. I trusted him and let his son know,” said the sanitary inspector.
Not satisfied, Adikesavan’s son sent a picture of his father to a fellow Covid patient, who then confirmed that he had been talking about a different person all these days.The sanitary inspector said that she had dropped them at the queue in the X-ray section and left. On June 15, Adikesavan’s son approached the Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital, where he found out that there is no record of his father being admitted there.
Speaking to Express, Dr P Vasanthamani, Dean of KMC said, “The elderly person did not come inside our campus. If he had, there would be proof of it. There are three different registers we maintain to monitor Covid-19 patients and his name is not in any of them. He might have gone missing on the way or before entering the premises.”
As his son made enquiries in KMC campus, he was told there was an elderly man sitting under a tree for three days, but it is not confirmed whether it was Adikesavan.He then lodged a complaint with St Thomas Mount police, who directed him to the Kilpauk police station. Anyone having information about Adikesavan can contact 7418975507.