60-year-old inmate at leprosy hospital missing, police alerted

Mumbai: A 60-year-old inmate of the BMC-run Ackworth Leprosy hospital has gone missing, following which a police complaint has been lodged. Merry Chinaapa, the patient, has gone missing despite there being six security personnel at the hospital.

One of the women inmates at the hospital, who did not want to be named, said, “Merry was residing in Ward no 2, from where all of us women were shifted to Ward no. 6. Merry was upset and was not ready to shift from that particular ward. Then the hospital authorities mercilessly threw her luggage out of the ward. That made her upset and she disappeared.” Ms Chinaapa has been missing since December 27.

A police officer from the Matunga police station said, “We do not have concrete information, but we will start our search.” The hospital wrote a letter on December 29 to the Matunga police station, stating Ms Chinaapa was missing.

One of the security officers from the hospital claimed none of them saw her leave the hospital. “When we were counting the number of patients in the hospital while serving tea on December 29, we realised that one was missing,” he said.

Repeated attempts to contact, Dr Amita Pednekar, superintendent of the hospital, Dr Padamja Keskar, Executive Health officer, BMC, Datta Patil, Security head officer of BMC, were unsuccessful.