Ranchi, June 2: If you feel like getting a health check-up and buying a bottle immediately afterwards to drown your worries, Chaibasa Sadar Hospital in West Singhbhum is the place to go.
The state-run hospital has a boundary wall on one side and 97 shops lining its premises on the other, all of which pay a total monthly rent of around Rs 75,000 to the hospital management society.
Of these, one is a liquor shop. For the record, none is a pharmacy.
The booze shop is among the outlets that has been paying rent to the hospital management society since a decade.
It is not illegal to have a liquor shop on the boundary of a hospital. Excise commissioner Vinod Shankar Singh explained that while online liquor shops, which mean those with arrangements to drink on the spot, like bars, must be at least 50 metres away from a place of worship or an educational institution, there is no such rule for offline shops or purchase points without the provision to drink.
But, while it is not illegal, it is certainly unusual. "Ideally, it should not be there. There's something called social responsibility," excise commissioner Singh conceded.
Bhanu Birua, the husband of a female employee in the hospital, said his wife felt insecure working late in the evenings. "I have to pick her up if she is working late because there are drunks on the premises," he said.
An employee of the hospital said empty liquor bottles are daily strewn across the five-acre hospital premises, which also had a malnutrition treatment centre, a college for auxiliary nurses-cum-midwives, diagnostic centres, integrated counselling and testing centre for HIV/AIDS.
"People come and freely drink on hospital premises, making it an open-air booze party. Also, people quarrel near the liquor shop which charges Rs 60 to Rs 100 more than the MRP," he said. "This is one hospital where you'd find getting liquor easier than medicines," he added.
He is right.
Apart from the liquor shop, a grocery store, fan repair shacks, electronic goods outlets are among the warren of 97 shops flanking the hospital premises, more if one counts the sub-lets, but there are no pharmacies, which usually dot nearby areas of any heal hub, big or small. Inside Chaibasa Sadar Hospital is a small medicine store with "only Paracetamol and iron tablets", said an insider.
But, the liquor shop question is a hot potato West Singhbhum's civil surgeon, Dr Ugeshwar Ram, doesn't even want to touch.
Asked, Dr Ram went on denial mode. "No, no, no, I am not going to comment on this. I will not speak on this issue at all," he said.
In Ranchi, Dr Pravin Chandra, director-in-chief, Jharkhand health services, said he was surprised. "I was not aware of any shop (flanking Chaibasa Sadar Hospital premises), forget a liquor shop. If it is operating, I will definitely make inquiries on how something like this has been allowed in the first place," he said.
