Dogs eat patient after dragging her from hospital in India

In what can be described as a horrible case of negligence, dogs have reportedly eaten the body of a woman patient who went missing from a government hospital in India.

The incident took place in Rajgarh district in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, on March 22. The victim is said to be Bismallah Bai, a 70-year-old woman. Incidentally, this is the fifth such incident in the state in less than 10 months, and the second this year, a Times of India report said.

According to the report, sanitation workers chanced upon the grisly remains of the body when they went looking for the source of the stench that had been troubling patients and doctors.

“Only her head and some upper body parts are left. The rest has been eaten up by animals,” Mukesh Gaur, a police station in-charge, was quoted as saying. It unclear if the patient was alive when attacked. There were signs of the body being dragged five to seven feet through the undergrowth, the report said.

The hospital authorities were apparently unaware that the patient was missing until they found what was left of her in the backyard. An official described it as the most horrifying scene he had ever seen.

Identified from purse and sweater

“It was just a head and half the torso. Even that had been chewed up. It was gruesome. There wasn’t much left for a post-mortem,” he said, adding that she was identified from her purse and scraps of her sari and sweater.

The victim, Bishmillah’s grandson Mohammad Nameem, 25, said she lived in Guna district and came to Rajgarh and wanted to stay there. The family came back to look for her when she didn’t return home. “We were searching for her even today when we got the call from police,” he told the newspaper.

The administration has ordered a probe by the sub-divisional magistrate into the incident. Police say Bismillah was found lying on a road, unwell, on March 20. Sources said she may have wandered out at night and been attacked by hungry dogs.

The newspaper said that it tried to contact health minister Rustam Singh but got no response.