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Family of Odisha tribal woman carry her body on a sling for 30 km
Mathili panchayat samiti chairperson Laxmipriya Nayak said Kalmari’s family tried to arrange for a vehicle to take her body back home. However, they did not have enough money for a vehicle.
The family of a tribal woman in Odisha’s Malkangiri district had to carry her body a sling for 30km on Thursday, two years after another tribal man Dana Majhi was forced to walk back home with the body of his dead wife on his shoulder.
Sources said Mude Kalmari from Temurupali village under Mathili block fell ill after which her family members rushed her to a nearby government hospital. However, the doctors present at the hospital allegedly expressed the inability to treat the woman.
Kalmari’s family then took her to a witchdoctor in Guruguda village hoping that he could get her back on her feet. However, she died on Wednesday night.
Mathili panchayat samiti chairperson Laxmipriya Nayak said Kalmari’s family tried to arrange for a vehicle to take her body back home. However, they did not have enough money for a vehicle, said Nayak.
“With no option left, the family members carried the body in a sling for 30km from Guruguda to Temurupalli. The family members had to carry the body in forested roads and had to cross small rivulets,” she said.
Malkangiri chief district medical officer Dr Ajay Baitharu did not comment on why doctors at the Mathili hospital refuse to treat the woman.
Activists said in absence of proper roads to hundreds of villages, sick and pregnant women are often carried on sling or cot.
“Despite claiming to have developed good road infrastructure, several villages in Odisha are still out of bounds for ambulance and hearse vans. So people have no other way than to carry the sick and infirm on cots for several kilometres,” said activist Pradip Pradhan.
In August this year, a pregnant woman in Kandhamal district was carried on a cot by locals for at least 12km through a swelling river so that she could get an ambulance.
