For about two weeks now, 29-year-old Leeba Ratheesh has been a patient at the orthopaedic ward of the Ernakulam General Hospital. She was admitted there after she was allegedly tortured by police officers after her arrest on charge of theft.
Leeba’s case has been in the newspapers and television reports since she was admitted, prompting a stream of people to visit her. The uncontrolled flow of visitors, however, is proving a nuisance for Leeba and other patients in the ward.
“On Wednesday alone, she received about 250 visitors. She hasn’t had much rest,” said Benny Francis, a member of the Cheranalloor panchayat and the action council fighting on her behalf. The visitors include family members, friends, neighbours who came to know about her plight, members of various human rights groups, action council members, and politicians. Among the visitors are also police officers recording her statement for the case.
Other patients in the orthopaedic ward are enraged that her presence has turned the hospital ward into a visitors’ room of sorts. “These people have been coming and going all through the day. There is so much noise. We are all patients here and I have a headache from all the noise made by these people,” said an aged woman two beds down from Leeba’s.
The frenzy reached its zenith on Thursday evening when Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala and MLA Hibi Eden arrived at the hospital to visit Leeba. The small ward and hospital premises were crowded with the Minister’s entourage, members of the Congress and Kerala Students’ Union eager to impress the Minister, action council members, other politicians, a hundred-odd police officers part of the security arrangements, and a horde of journalists. Leeba’s seven-year-old daughter burst into tears, frightened by the din made by the group of men and women, as patients and bystanders looked on.
