Srinagar: With back to back COVID positive cases being detected from central Jail in Anantnag, the families of the inmates have expressed resentments for not providing the medical attention to them.
With the fresh thirty nine cases detected today, the total number of cases reported from the Jail is 44 now. With this, families allege that all of the inmates have been put together in a common space and no treatment is being meted out to them.
Family members of one of the prisoners, from Srinagar, said that growing number of positive cases at Anantnag Jail poses a high risk as 44 cases have been found within four days.
“In just two days, dozens of positive cases have come out and it will be growing in the coming days, till they get a proper medical attention,” he said.
Another family said that despite multiple requests from the families, no steps have been taken by the authorities till now. “The first and the foremost step that authorities should have followed was to put positive cases in isolation, however; neither are inmates being put on quarantine nor they get any medical care,” the family member of an inmate said.
A family member whose kin tested positive today, has the same story to tell.
“All the inmates including my brother are being sidelined and no medical attention is being given to them,” younger brother of one of the inmate said.
He said that despite the critical situation, inmates are being forced to live together thus putting hundreds of lives at risk. “Making them live together will worsen the situation further,” he said.
Earlier, an official from the jail located in Anantnag’s Kehribal Mattan area, said that it is not possible to get the tests done in a day or two.
“We take around hundred prisoners in a day for testing,” he said, adding that whosoever tests positive is being shifted in a separate cell. However, families have denied this, saying no one among the inmates live separately despite COVID fear.
When asked why have not the inmates been shifted to hospitals if the number of positive cases have risen so fast, he said that they have been put in separate cells. “They are being taken care of separately,” he said.
On July 11, Zahoor Ahmad Bhat, was the first inmate who tested positive for novel Coronavirus, leaving his family and relatives worried. Following the news of Bhat’s infection, many families have come forward expressing concern over the move for not providing them the proper medical attention to them.
Bhat is a younger brother of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) founder Muhammad Maqbool Bhat who was executed on February 11, 1984, at Tihar Jail in Delhi.
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