Singh

New Delhi, Nov. 4 (PTI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today wrote to the wife of a 32-year-old kidney patient who died after security restrictions during his visit to a Chandigarh medical institute apparently prevented him from reaching the emergency ward on time.

“I am writing to you to express my profound sense of sadness at the death of your husband Shri Sumit Verma yesterday,” Singh’s letter said.

Verma, who was being shifted from a private hospital to PGIMER Chandigarh, died almost at the doorstep of the government-run institute and his family had alleged that security personnel kept diverting their vehicle for nearly two hours.

A relative claimed the security personnel made them run from one gate of the hospital to another despite being told that the patient was in a critical condition.

A senior PGIMER official said Verma, whose age was reported as 40 yesterday, was brought dead to the hospital’s emergency ward.

A statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office had said it was “saddened” by the death and had asked for a “full report”.

In a late-evening statement, however, Chandigarh police had claimed that “there was no undue hindrance to commuters” because of the Prime Minister’s visit as “minimum traffic was halted”. The death was “not due to traffic jam”, the statement said.

The patient, the statement added, died of “complications arising out of renal failure”.

But Singh, who was visiting the institute for its annual convocation programme, took note of the public inconvenience caused by VIP movements and said he “deeply” regretted Verma’s death because of the security restrictions. “…this is something I deeply regret”, the Prime Minister said in his letter.

“I have issued instructions so that in future authorities are more sensitive to the concerns of the common man while imposing such restrictions for reasons of security,” he said.