Indore, Jan 25 (PTI) The Congress on Sunday claimed that a 75-year-old ward president of the party died due to an outbreak of diarrhoea caused by contaminated water in Indore’s Bhagirathpura area.
Health
officials rejected the claim, asserting that the man suffered from chronic heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, and his death had no connection to the diarrhoea outbreak.
Madhya Pradesh Congress president Jitu Patwari targeted the government over the death.
“It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that my Congress colleague and the party's ward president in Bhagirathpura, Rajaram Borasi, passed away due to contaminated drinking water in Indore,” he wrote on X.
Patwari accused the state government of negligence and corruption in the supply of drinking water and claimed that 28 persons have died in the water-related health crisis in Indore.
Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr Madhav Prasad Hasani disagreed.
“According to the 2018-19 angiography report of Borasi (75), a resident of Bhagirathpura, he was suffering from heart disease. He also had chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes,” he said in a statement.
Medical documents confirm that Borasi had no complaints of vomiting or diarrhoea in recent times, he said.
The spate of people falling ill due to contaminated drinking water in Bhagirathpura in India’s cleanest city began in late December.
According to officials, contaminated water was found in 51 tube wells in Bhagirathpura, and tests showed the presence of E. coli bacteria. Officials said this pathogen caused a large number of infections in Bhagirathpura.
They said that due to a leak in the municipal drinking water pipeline in the area, sewage from a toilet got mixed in the water.
The state government, in a status report submitted to the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Indore bench on January 15, mentioned the deaths of seven people, including a five-month-old boy, during the outbreak.
Amid conflicting claims over the toll, an audit conducted by a committee from the city's Government Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College indicated that the deaths of 15 people in Bhagirathpura may be linked to the outbreak in some way.
The administration has provided compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of 21 persons who lost their lives since the diarrhoea outbreak began in Bhagirathpura.
Officials claim that some of these individuals also died due to other illnesses and various causes, but financial assistance was being provided to their kin on humanitarian grounds. PTI HWP MAS NR
