Patient Discharged from Ahmedabad Hospital Missing for 16 Days, Alleges Family

A patient admitted to the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad city has gone missing, his relatives alleged on Saturday.

As per the hospital, Ajaysinh Raulji (40) was discharged on May 27 after he tested negative for coronavirus, but his family claims that he never reached home.

"Raulji was admitted to the civil hospital on May 26 as he was feeling unwell. He was admitted to the COVID-19 ward. His mother who is 70 years old was with him," said Raulji's brother-in-law Pushpendrasinh Thakor.

"On May 28, his mother returned home. But when a friend called him, he said he was still at the hospital," Thakor claimed.

The hospital told the family that he had been discharged on the evening of May 27 itself.

"When we called him on his mobile phone, it was switched off," said Thakor, who lives in Bodeli with his wife, Raulji's sister.

The couple visited the Civil Hospital on June 10, thinking that he might have been placed in quarantine which would have been over by then, but there was no trace of Raulji.

Raulji's wife is unwell, his mother is old and his father has suffered paralysis stroke, so none of them could go to the hospital to find his whereabouts, he said.

"We visited all the wards, looked into every nook and cranny of the hospital but could not find Raulji. The hospital authorities showed a computer entry which said he was discharged at 7:30 pm on May 27," said Thakor.

"The hospital did not provide us any discharge papers," he said, adding that they lodged complaint about Raulji's missing at Shahibaug police station on the basis of print out of the computer entry.

Hospital's Resident Medical Officer Sanjay Kapadia said the hospital had discharged him on May 27.

"We do contact the family members of patient on phone before discharging," he said, but could not provide details of what happened in Raulji's case.

Inspector A K Patel of Shahibaug police station said they were probing the case.

With ever-growing number of coronavirus cases, instances of Civil Hospital authorities failing to keep track of patients have come to light. In one case, family members had to run from pillar to post to locate a dead body.

The district has reported over 16,000 coronavirus cases so far.