22 Died In Alleged ‘Mock drill’ At Agra Hospital On Apr 27

In an extremely inhumane and spine-chilling development, an owner of a prominent private hospital in Agra was allegedly caught on audio record saying that the hospital management deliberately shut off oxygen supply on April 27 for five minutes in a “mock drill” as an experiment to know who are all going to survive. The Uttar Pradesh government has said it will carry out an inquiry on this asap.

The owner of Paras Hospital, Arinjay Jain can be purportedly heard saying in the 1.5-minute audio clip – “We were told that even the Chief Minister cannot get oxygen, so start discharging patients. We also commenced counselling families. Only some showed interest to listen but the others said they would not leave. I said ok let’s do a mock drill. We will find out who will die and who will survive. So we did that at 7 am. A mock drill was done. No one knows. Then we identified 22 patients. We realised they would die. This was done for 5 minutes. They started turning blue”.

Agra District Magistrate Prabhu N Singh claimed – “There was no death records on that particular day due to lack of oxygen. However, we shall conduct a probe” he said. The hospital records seven Covid deaths on the 26th and 27th of April. “There is no truth that 22 people died but we will carry out an inquiry,” Mr Singh said in a statement.

Arinjay Jain explains his side of the version claiming that his statements were misinterpreted. “Mock drill means taking stock of the situation before facing an issue, to understand how to work in an emergency. We had categorised the patients…We categorised Covid patients to see which patient needs how much oxygen… A mock drill does not mean switching off a patient’s oxygen. We did not switch off oxygen. I did not clearly say so in the video. I said a mock drill was done at 7 am. In this, 22 patients were segregated.”

Soon after the audio went viral, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi slammed at the apathy and had hit out at the Modi-led government. “There is a severe shortage of both oxygen and humanity under the BJP rule,” he said in a Hindi tweet. “Action should be taken immediately against all those who are responsible for this dangerous crime,” he added. He also offered his condolences to the families of those who died allegedly due to the oxygen shortage.