• Anand Madhab

On the morning of January 27, 2021, my daughter called me (while still in tears) informing me of her father-in-law’s death. He had been admitted for treatment at Metro Hospital in Noida due to post covid complications. The news hit us hard as my daughter was married hardly for a year now, secondly it was too soon for him to have left for his heavenly abode. But accepting it as our fate, we consoled ourselves. After February 2021, there were reports of so many deaths due to Covid or Post Covid complications that, we started to fear answering a phone call or opening social media accounts. In March itself, I lost many of my close relatives to Covid. Bad news of close friends dying of Covid flowed in from every nook and cranny. According to PUTA (Patna University Teachers’ Association), eleven people (teachers and non-teaching staff) have died in Patna University alone. Every family started living in an atmosphere of fear and panic due to Corona. There is hardly any family or person who has been able to remain untouched by the ill-effects of the corona pandemic.

But the figures (of death), that are coming to the fore, are somewhere posing a question mark on the government figures of Covid deaths. People have been witnessing the atrocities of Corona. They have seen long queues of dead bodies in various crematoriums and cemeteries. They have seen dead bodies being cremated or burnt in parks and playgrounds. Tokens to wait for as long as 24 hours or 36 hours were being given to perform the last rites of the dead bodies. Everyone was affected and harassed by this pandemic. People died in large numbers. But if the government figures are to be believed, only 3.77 lakh people have died so far in the country, due to corona. Under these circumstances, it is only natural to not believe in the official Corona death toll.

CRS i.e. Civil Registration System keeps an account of every death. According to it, there have been 34,320 deaths in May 2020 in Madhya Pradesh alone and 1,64,838 deaths in May 2021. This is four times more than the number of deaths occurring every year. Although it is not necessary that all the deaths have been due to Covid, but the quadrupling of the sudden death figures raises a big question.

International journals have made startling claims, completely dismissing the official death toll. An article published in the international magazine ‘The Economist’ said that the official death toll that was released in India (due to Corona) would actually be five to seven times more than that. This claim in The Economist’s article, was made on the basis of research by Christopher Leffler of Virginia Commonwealth University in the US.

According to this research, there have been more than 20 lakh deaths due to corona in India. The American newspaper the ‘New York Times’ also estimates that at least 6 lakh deaths have occurred in India, even if the deaths from Corona are considered very low. If we look at this estimate in extremities, then the death toll from Corona in India can be up to 42 lakhs. The BBC report was also similar. But the Government of India rejected this claim outright, saying that it is wrong, misleading and unscientific, which has nothing to do with the truth.

On the other hand, the high courts of the states also expressed their doubts about the official figures, and due to their interference, the figures of old deaths are coming to the fore. Wherever the death toll is consistently low, a re-examination is called for.

Now the big claims of probable manifold figures of death may not be true, but it is true that in many states, there has been a discrepancy in the death toll from Corona.

After being rebuked by the high court, the Bihar government accepted the death of about 72% more people in a single day. While this figure was 5458 on June 07, it increased to 9429 within 24 hours i.e. on June 09. According to the State Health Department, this figure came out after conducting an audit and 3951 additional deaths were accepted. The Patna High Court, while describing the matter as a serious one, said that such negligence in the case of people’s death is not justified. The court even said that these figures do not appear to be true, still. Leader of Opposition in Bihar Legislative Assembly Tejashwi Yadav took a dig at the Bihar government and said that still, these figures are not close to truth. Five times more people have died of corona. The government is distorting and hiding the figures.

Even earlier, there was a conflict between the two affidavits submitted by the officials of the Bihar government on the dead bodies flowing in Buxar. In the month of May, the Chief Secretary of Bihar said in his affidavit that in the last ten days (May 4-14, 2021) only 8 people died in Buxar due to corona, while the Patna commissioner in his affidavit said that in these ten days, 389 people have been cremated at a single ghat in Buxar. It is also true that all these 389 people may not have died due to corona, but it can be well imagined that when so many dead bodies have been burnt on one ghat, then if the figures of other ghats are taken into consideration, how much more this number will become.

Uttarakhand added 922 old deaths to its records while amending the figures of Corona deaths. Maharashtra has added about 9 thousand additional deaths since May 1. On June 13 itself, Maharashtra has included more than 2 thousand old deaths in the figure. At least 6 states including Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab, UP have given new death figures for the month of May. This added about 20,741 deaths, which were not recorded earlier. About 143 files of JA Hospital, Gwalior and 150 files of those who died in Health Department in private hospitals in Gwalior, are still waiting for audit. The audit will reveal if deaths occurred due to corona. Since March in Sikar district, only 165 deaths were attributed to corona. Whereas this figure is up to four times more. When the Rajasthan Patrika team dug into the death certificates and talked to the managers of the crematoriums to reveal the death figures, the shocking revelations surfaced. Such a picture has come out in Gorakhpur district, seeing which it can be inferred that even though the official figures of death due to corona may be less, but the reality is something else. Peepal trees standing in most of the localities of the city are laden with earthen pots these days. (Holds Traditional Significance) The pots are proof of how many people living near the tree have died.

These figures do not include deaths that occurred while running from one hospital to another, not even those that went undiagnosed. The number of deaths that occurred at home is more in rural areas. There are also many cases of post covid death. Many doctors say that 10 to 20 percent of such patients were admitted in the hospital whose RTPCR (Corona Test) report came negative but on doing HRCT (City Scan) the lung was found infected and their treatment was also done according to the corona protocol. A large number of such people have died, but they do not fall under the category of Covid death. If these are added, there will definitely be an immediate surge of 10 and 20 percent in Corona deaths.

There cannot be politics on the deaths due to Covid, nor can the figures be hidden. It is the demand of humanity that the correct figures of these deaths should be brought out in open, so that both the governments and the public should be fully aware of the third and other waves of Corona to come.

The author is Chairman, Research Department and Manifesto Committee and State Spokesperson, Bihar Congress