A couple was allegedly forced to get down from an ambulance after their seven-year-old daughter died en route to a hospital in Odisha’s Malkangiri district on Friday.

KORAPUT: A couple was allegedly forced to get down from an ambulance after their seven-year-old daughter died en route to a hospital in Odisha’s Malkangiri district on Friday.

Dinabandhu Khemundu and his wife had to carry the body of their daughter Basra for a while before residents alerted a few journalists, who forced officials to arrange another ambulance to take them to their village.

Sabyasachi Biswal, the state chief for the 108 and 102 ambulance helplines, said when a patient is declared dead by a doctor, ambulances are obliged by protocol to transport the body home.

Officials said that a case had been registered against the ambulance driver and an inquiry ordered into his conduct. “Necessary action will be taken once we get the inquiry report,” Malkangiri collector K Sudarshan Chakravarthy said.

According to Khemundu, Basra was admitted to a hospital in Mathili with high fever on Thursday. On Friday, after her condition deteriorated, she was referred to a hospital in Malkangiri, 50km away. Khemundu said they had covered around half the distance when their daughter died near Pandripani. “We took her to a local hospital, where the doctors declared her dead,” he said.

“We pleaded with the driver to drop us at our village, but he refused, and forced us to get down from the ambulance near Nayakguda,” Khemundu added.

The driver is said to have told a health department official that his head office had advised him to hand over Basra’s body to the family. “However, on humanitarian grounds, I dropped them near Nayakguda, from where they could take a short route to their village,” he was quoted as saying.

The case comes barely days after a man, Dana Majhi, again in Odisha, walked over 10km with his wife’s body following a hospital’s alleged refusal to offer a vehicle to transport them home. The PMO has sought a report on the Majhi incident from the Odisha government. Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a native of the state, said Friday’s episode would not have happened if the Odisha government had taken “exemplary action” against those responsible for the Majhi incident.

