Video Of Minor Pushing Hospital Stretcher In UP Peddled As West Bengal

A distressing video of a minor pushing a medical stretcher with a patient lying on it, at a district hospital in Uttar Pradesh is doing the rounds on social media with false claims that the incident happened at a hospital in West Bengal.

The video, which shows the minor helping his mother push the stretcher carrying his ailed grandfather, has been shared with a narrative that takes a dig at the existing medical facilities of West Bengal to treat the novel Coronavirus patients. There has been more than 47,000 COVID-19 cases in Bengal, till July 21.

The 17 second footage has been captioned as, "Democracy is in danger today, hence such a scenario can be seen in West Bengal'' (Original caption in Bangla: গণতন্ত্র আজ বিপন্ন তাই বাংলায় এরকম দৃশ প্রকাশ পায়)

The post can be seen here and has been archived here.

A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader of West Bengal, Phalguni Patra, had also shared the video on her official Facebook page with the same narrative. The video has since been deleted. Below is a screenshot of the Facebook post.

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Fact Check

BOOM was able to ascertain that the video is from Uttar Pradesh. On observing closely, we found a location mentioned as Deoria, UP, on the top right corner of the viral footage.

We broke the video into its key-frames and ran a reverse image search on a few of its frames and found the same video, which was uploaded in several news reports on the incident.

According to a report by India Today the incident happened in a Deoria district hospital in Uttar Pradesh where a six-year-old boy was filmed while pushing a stretcher carrying his ill grandfather, along with his mother. The family had to operate the stretcher for the patient, as a ward boy allegedly demanded Rs 30 for pushing the stretcher to different wards. The ward boy of the hospital's surgical ward was subsequently removed.

The footage created an outrage among citizens and caught the attention of Deoria district magistrate, Amit Kishore who visited the hospital and ordered a probe into the episode.

According to a Times of India report, the patient was from Gaura Village in Deoria district who was injured two days before the incident took place and was admitted in the surgical ward of the hospital. He was attended by his daughter and her 6-year-old son. When a hospital staff demanded a bribe of Rs 30 every time for pushing the stretcher to the ward for dressing, his daughter refused to pay the money.

Kishore set up a probe and sent the case to the Chief Medical Officer of Deoria for investigation. He has further mentioned that the ward boy has been removed from the ward and necessary action has been taken.

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