A housewife from Vanasthalipuram in Hyderabad knocked the doors of Telangana High Court on Thursday seeking to know whether her husband, who was admitted in Gandhi Hospital after testing positive for coronavirus, was alive or not.
The woman filed a habeas corpus petition requesting the court to direct the government to present him before it and declare attempts of officials to hide whereabouts of her husband as illegal. A bench headed by Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan directed the government to furnish details over the points raised by the petitioner.
Along with the woman, 10 other members of her family including her husband, in-laws, tested positive for COVID-19 in the last week of April. Her husband’s elder brother was the first to contract the virus. Eventually, the woman and her husband and the in-laws contracted the virus.
While her husband’s brother recuperated, her father-in-law died on April 29 while undergoing treatment at Gandhi Hospital. His body was cremated as per the medical protocols. The woman, however, claimed that authorities failed to inform the condition of her husband.
She maintained that only after she tweeted to IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao about her husband’s condition on May 1 did the authorities announce that her husband died and his body was cremated by the GHMC. As per the rules, the authorities should have video recorded the entire process of transporting and cremating the body. But they had not released any such video till now, the housewife contended.
The woman said action of the officials raised several suspicions in the minds of the family members and hence approached the HC.
