The body of the woman was found in a decomposing condition at the Trichy Mannachanallur Government Hospital. Police are investigating.
The Mannachanallur Government Hospital in Trichy District has 8 doctors, 7 nurses, 3 contract nurses and about 30 cleaners. This hospital with operating theater has bed facilities for fifty patients. About 350 outpatients come here daily for medical treatment. There are no guards at the hospital. Only covert surveillance cameras have been installed to monitor visitors.
In this situation, the stench has spread all over the hospital premises this morning. Subsequent examination at the hospital revealed that the body of a respectable woman, about fifty years of age, was lying in a decomposing state in a small changing room near the operating room on the first floor of the hospital. The Mannachanallur police station was informed about this. Police rushed to the spot, seized the woman’s body and sent it to the Trichy Government General Hospital for autopsy. Doctors suspect the woman, who was found in a decomposing state, may have died three days ago.
The police investigation revealed that the woman’s name was Sivapakiyam (age 55) and that a relative had complained on the 16th that she was missing. Further, the complaint said that the person who had gone to Mannachanallur shopping mall on the 12th to have tea did not return home and could not be found in many places.
Based on the complaint, police suspect that the missing Sivapakshyam may have fainted and died when he arrived at the hospital for medical treatment. Police are investigating the surveillance cameras in the hospital. Sivapakiyam was admitted to the hospital on the 15th due to chest pain. The doctors who examined him advised that ‘relatives should bring someone and then treat him as an inpatient’.
Police are monitoring the situation with surveillance camera footage of when Sivapakiyam, who was later released from the hospital, went back to the first floor of the hospital. The hospital was told that the operating room on the first floor would be operational only once a week, with cleaners going to clean the rooms on the first day of surgery, and that the room’s aluminum doors would be locked on other days. Those locked doors are not very sturdy. The door locks open even if a patient faints and falls on the door. Police suspect that it is not known whether Sivapakshyam fell into the room.
Many lay down to rest on the tree trunks and hospital porches on the hospital premises. Thus no one is given the task of checking whether the person lying down for rest is alive or not. In a hospital that is visited by hundreds of people daily, one person has been lying dead for more than three days. The only pain is that it has gone undiagnosed.