Seema Mukherjee at her Ultadanga home. Picture by Amit Datta

A cancer patient who lost the money for her treatment in a taxi when the driver drove off with her bag was shooed away from the chief minister’s office and received little help from police.

Seema Mukherjee, suffering from liver cancer, got off the taxi a few yards from her home at Ultadanga on June 23 but before all the luggage could be taken out, the driver sped away with a small bag that contained Rs 3 lakh. The cellphone of her father, who was accompanying her, was also in the bag.

She was returning from her parent’s house in Durgapur with the money for her treatment her father had given her from his retirement benefits.

After all her attempts to recover the money failed, she got in touch with the chief minister’s confidential assistant, Joydip Mukherjee, who told her to meet him at Writers’ Buildings on Tuesday with a letter narrating the incident.

The 38-year-old woman, who has two sons but is estranged from her husband, turned up at 4pm after visiting the police headquarters at Lalbazar and was kept waiting for about 10 minutes at the visitors’ gate.

Having walked from Lalbazar with her cancer-battered body further weakened by chemotherapy, she could not bear the wait while the constables there fed on telebhaja (fries) and puffed rice.

She called Mukherjee who told her to go to the central’ gate, which was another five minutes walk. This time she was let in and was asked to sit in an air-conditioned room.

An official there told her to hand over the application since it would take time to meet the chief minister’s aide. She said: “I will wait.”

Some more minutes ticked away before the man returned to say she could not meet Mukherjee as the chief minister was about to step into Writers’. Seema’s hopes rose.

She came out of the room into the corridor and saw Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee walking in. Seema took a few steps towards him when she saw him take a glance. “I wanted to fall at his feet and tell him to save this dying woman.”

The security guards moved in quickly, pushing her away.

She came away, not knowing if her application would ever reach the chief minister.

Seema did not give up. The chemotherapy, under Dr Jayanta Mukherjee, had just started and, though she is not supposed to miss any of the sessions, for almost a month now she has had no treatment.

Dr Mukherjee said: “Missing treatment can affect her chances of recovery. It can be fatal in the long run.”

Seema lives in the same building as her husband, who wants to divorce her, and has recourse merely to the Rs 1.5 lakh kept in a monthly income scheme that pays for her sons’ education.

She called the chief minister’s home — an official at Writers’ had given her the number. She acquired his office contact from there and phoned, requesting that she be allowed to speak to him for a few seconds.

“The person who took the call told me ‘this is not possible, everyone wants to speak to the CM’,” Seema said.

Her experience with the police, though not so bitter, was not any more fruitful either.

Having got off the taxi with her father when she entered home and realised that the bag with the money was missing, Seema ran out and went to the local police station.

Two days later, she visited the detective department at Lalbazar and helped the police to draw a sketch of the driver. “I can recall his face clearly.”

She called her father’s cellphone a day after the theft. When someone answered, she appealed: “Please return the money. It’s for my treatment.” Click: the phone went dead.

Since then, with copies of the sketch she has been making the rounds of taxi stands at Baguiati, Sealdah and Howrah, from where she had taken the cab.