MUMBAI: Family members of poet and activist VV Rao who is being treated for COVID-19 in the Nanavati Hospital here have written to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) urging it to direct hospital authorities to update them regularly on his health status.
The 81-year-old Rao is accused in the Elgar Parishad case and was lodged in the Taloja jail since 2018. Family members of Rao including his spouse and daughters requested the human rights commission's urgent intervention in the matter and immediate direction to the hospital and prison administrations to provide transparent, official updates on Rao’s health status and line of treatment every six hours to them.
“We should have access to information and the patient according to the law of the land and medical ethics. We also urge the NHRC to direct the concerned authorities to allow a family member to attend on him, since he is reportedly not in a position to do anything on his own,” stated in the letter.
After the directive by the NHRC, they said Rao was provided with the best possible treatment in a reputed super speciality hospital by the Maharashtra government at its cost. However, now they have been denied basic information on his health and the only official information provided to the family was that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
They also complained that the family was not informed by either the hospital or prison authorities about a head injury discovered on him upon arrival at the Nanavati Hospital. “We learnt about it only from friends in the media and civil society. Rao's health has become the subject of public speculation with no official or transparent information from the hospital authorities, which is causing extreme anxiety to the entire family. We believe that health updates on a person in judicial custody must be shared with his family. The denial of regular health updates to the family is not only unconstitutional but is a cruel and inhuman act,” reads the letter.
“It is the family’s right to get routine updates about the medical status of a patient, any treatment that he is undergoing and the risks involved regarding the same. Keeping us in the dark about Rao’s medical status is a flagrant violation of the NHRC directive,” said the family members.