Malkangiri: Malkangiri Additional District Magistrate, Birasen Pradhan, today handed over a cheque of Rs 1,50,000 to one Tamal Bakchi towards medical assistance for his father Deben Bakchi.
Deben is currently undergoing treatment at Sidhartha Hospital in Visakhapatnam.
Malkangiri Collector & Chairman District Red Cross Society Manish Agarwal had sanctioned the amount on humanitarian ground out of District Red Cross Fund following a field enquiry consequent to publication of a news item on Deben and his plight in an Odia daily.
According to reports, Deben aged about 70 years from MV 79 village of Malkangiri district had developed a hole in his food pipe.
He had undergone a complicated surgery for the same at a private hospital at Jagadalpur in neighboring Chhattisgarh.
Later, it was found that Deben had developed infection following which his family members shifted him to another private hospital at Visakhapatnam where he had to undergo surgery again. In the process, the family lost all that money it had.
Deben’s son Tamal has claimed that they managed to arrange Rs 3 lakh by mortgaging their house and land to pay the hospital’s bills but they still needed another Rs 2 lakh to clear the amount.
Tamal had then appealed to the district administration, Chief Minister and Prime Minister to help him out in the situation.
In his appeal, he had said that if he fails to get help under the circumstances he had no other option than commit suicide. A video of the appeal had gone viral on social media and an Odia daily had carried a story on him.
According to the Deputy Collector Pramod Kumar Behera, the report had caught the attention of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s office which had instructed the Collector to do the needful to help Tamal to get his father released from the private hospital at Visakhapatnam.
On humanitarian ground the staffs of the Collector’s office have donated an amount of Rs 15,000 to Tamal.
Similarly, Binod Tawari, President of a local Marwari youths association Maheswari Yuba Sanghathan, has also donated Rs 20,000 to him out of charity.