Munmun Chakraborty’s husband Subhashis, son Rishiraj and daughter Shivamrita at their Garfa home on Sunday. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Munmun Chakraborty, 36, a mother of two and the lone earning member of her family (she ran a photo studio in Chetla), had been admitted to AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, with fractures in her leg and hipbone on December 2 after an auto-rickshaw accident. She underwent an ankle operation but was unable to move on her own till Thursday night, when her family last met her.

Her husband, Subhashis, 42, who had received a frantic call from his wife at 4.21am on Friday urging him to come over and save her, is in shock. A singer who has been out of work for six years after something went wrong with his voice, he will have to bring up daughter Shivamrita, 11, and son Rishiraj, 2. Subhashis relived the hospital horror on Sunday, in their Garfa home….

I rushed to the hospital in a taxi within 15 minutes of getting her call. I called Munmun as soon as I got there. She received the call but she could not speak. She was just coughing. I told her to stay calm.

Munmun Chakraborty

I knew she would not be able to get down from her bed. So I told her to cover her face with the blanket and to just hold on. I was coming to her, I told her.

I was prevented by the security guards from entering the hospital and saving my wife. I will never know why. I literally pleaded with the guards but they wouldn’t relent.

By the time the crowd overpowered the guards and we entered the building, three hours after I had reached the spot, my wife had been choked to death in the orthopaedic wing on the second floor.

Rishiraj last saw his mother in hospital last Sunday with her foot in a cast and he still thinks she is there. He keeps repeating “Ma-er pa kete gechhe tai hospital-e bendhe rekhechhe (Mother has cut her foot so they have kept her in hospital)”. He keeps asking when she will come back home.

When we brought her body home on Sunday, my son was asleep and we didn’t wake him up. But my daughter Shivamrita saw the body with the face blackened and she just said, “This is not my mother”. She has gone into a shell since. How will I bring them up without Munmun? The task seems impossible.

My wife had repeatedly asked to be discharged but she was kept back on some pretext or the other. She was to be released on Friday but…

My wife is gone but I will not give up the fight against the AMRI authorities. I have already lodged a complaint with the Lake police station. I will also file a case in the high court.

‘Had he been in coma, he would not have felt the pain’

Animesh Chandra Dasgupta

Animesh Chandra Dasgupta, 81, was in the intensive care unit on the fourth floor of Annexe I after suffering a cerebral attack in his Santiniketan home last month. Debabrata Dasgupta, son of the retired Oil India official, recounted the difficulties faced by the family in identifying and retrieving his father’s body, in his Lake Gardens home on Sunday.

The condition of my father had improved a bit on Thursday, prompting the authorities to move him to the general ICU from the Neuro ICU. That turned out to be not a good thing because had he been in coma, he would perhaps not have felt any pain in his final moments.

We got the news a bit late as we haven’t bought a TV in our Calcutta home. My brother-in-law Tapan Kumar Roy reached the hospital at 8.30am. It was very chaotic from the start with no information centre at AMRI. There were just four or five sheets hanging on the wall of the main building. My father’s name was not on that list.

On the second floor of the main building, Tapan found 35 dead bodies in one room without any name-tags but my father’s body was not there either. Then they heard that some patients had been taken to AMRI’s Mukundapur and Salt Lake hospitals.

My son, Rudrashis, who was there with Tapan, said they didn’t realise that they were taking only the dead to SSKM as oxygen masks were being put on the mouths of the dead as well.

When we finally realised after a tour of the two other AMRI hospitals that my father must be no more, we tried to get into the SSKM morgue. That was at 10.45am, but were told to come back after noon as the autopsies were going on. Meanwhile the list of dead was increasing and a fear that someone else may have claimed my father’s body was rising.

We were finally able to identify the body at 6.30pm and leave the place at 7.30pm.

‘We hope she did not feel much pain’

Papiya Banerjee

Papiya Banerjee, 79, the first woman to complete her PhD in anthropology from Calcutta University, taught in that department till her retirement in the early 1990s. She had been admitted in the NICU on the fourth floor after suffering a cerebral attack on Tuesday night. Lopamudra, her daughter-in-law, spoke from their Prince Anwar Shah Road home.

My father-in-law Amulya Ratan Banerjee, 82, is attached with the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratisthan, where he was the head of the genetic department. He has been lamenting for the last two days the decision to admit my mother-in-law to AMRI.

She has suffered such attacks before and every time we took her to RKM Seva Pratisthan for treatment. But on Tuesday night, when she fell ill, there were no ICU beds available at the hospital. So, we took her to EEDF (Jodhpur Park) where too there was no ICU bed free. That’s when we went to AMRI.

Papiya Banerjee’s husband Amulya Ratan and (right) son Arup Ratan at their Prince Anwar Shah Road home on Sunday. (Bishwarup Dutta)

We got information about the fire at 4.30am and reached the hospital within half-an-hour. Local residents had gathered at the spot but they were not being allowed in. Later, when they were able in, they did manage to save some patients.

Around 10.30am, I thought I spotted my mother-in-law being carried away. But by the time we were able to reach the ambulance, they refused to open the door for us to have a look. So, we followed the ambulance to SSKM where we identified the body.

Because she was hardly being able to respond, we are hoping that she did not feel much pain. But we can’t really tell…

(As told to Rith Basu)