Four nurses of a Telangana hospital have been sacked for taking a selfie with the body of former Telugu Desam Party parliamentarian Nandamuri Harikrishna, who died in a road accident at Anneparthi village on Wednesday morning.
Harikrishna was the son of NT Rama Rao, legendary Telugu actor and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister.
Authorities of Kamineni super-specialty hospital at Narketpalli in Nalgonda district said the four hospital staffers — including a male nurse — were terminated from service on the grounds of “insensitivity”. A couple of the staffers could be seen smiling in the photograph, which was posted on a WhatsApp group.
The selfie went viral across both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Friday, with netizens denouncing the “insensitive and inhuman” act of the hospital staffers. When the matter came to the notice of hospital authorities, they sacked the four employees with immediate effect.
The nurses were readying the body for a post-mortem examination when they decided to take the selfie.
“It is an unfortunate incident. We deeply regret the insensitivity shown by our staff. As soon as it came to our notice, we served them termination letters,” said Kamineni Hospitals official spokesperson Venkat Bharadwaj.
{{/usCountry}}“It is an unfortunate incident. We deeply regret the insensitivity shown by our staff. As soon as it came to our notice, we served them termination letters,” said Kamineni Hospitals official spokesperson Venkat Bharadwaj.
{{/usCountry}}The hospital also conveyed its “heartfelt apologies” to Harikrishna’s relatives and supporters. “At Kamineni hospitals, we take our patients and their family members’ privacy very seriously. The latest incident is a major invasion of privacy. We strongly condemn this kind of uncivilised, inhuman behaviour. We are deeply saddened by what went down, and will work on making things better so as to prevent such acts from happening again,” an official statement from the hospital read.