Navi Mumbai: Following a viral video of a Vashi hospital staffer demanding Rs 2,000 from the relatives of a deceased woman to wrap her body, the concerned worker has been terminated from service.
The incident, which took place at the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation’s (NMMC) public hospital in Vashi, sparked outrage on social media and prompted a swift response from both the hospital administration and political groups.
According to sources, the deceased — a 23-year-old woman from Airoli — had died by suicide on Sunday. Her body was taken to Vashi hospital for a post-mortem and placed in the hospital mortuary.
On Monday, when her relatives arrived from Kanpur had gone to collect the body, a staffer working in the mortuary allegedly demanded Rs 2,000 to wrap the corpse properly in cloth. The interaction was caught on camera, and the video soon went viral online.
In response, workers from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) visited the hospital on Tuesday and confronted the medical superintendent. They also staged a symbolic protest by wrapping the superintendent in the same kind of cloth used for covering dead bodies. The MNS demanded criminal action against the staffer and accountability from the contractor responsible for hiring him.
The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation later clarified that the individual seen in the video was not a permanent hospital employee but a multipurpose worker employed through an outsourced agency — K.H.F.M. Hospital and Management Services Ltd..
"We instructed the agency to immediately remove the worker from duty and issued a warning to prevent such misconduct in the future," a statement released by the corporation said.
While the deceased’s family has not yet filed an official complaint, the hospital administration has assured strict disciplinary measures in future as well.
