Teenage girl thrown out of bus on coronavirus suspicion; dies of cardiac arrest

In a shocking incident, a 19-year-old girl died after being allegedly thrown off a bus in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district on suspicion of being infected with the novel coronavirus.

The victim, identified as Anshika, was travelling in a bus from Noida in the Firozabad district when she fainted apparently due to heat and exhaustion. The family of the girl has alleged that she was thrown off the bus near a toll plaza following an argument that ensued between them and the driver/conductor of the bus. The girl’s family has claimed that the men suspected that she was infected with Covid-19 and hence decided to act that way. The girl then died of a cardiac arrest. “She was absolutely fine when she boarded the bus. She had no symptom, and only had an issue of kidney stones which had developed earlier. We felt it was better for them to stay at home. At some point of the journey, due to heat and exhaustion, she fainted. The entire bus behaved as if she had Covid-19, and the driver and conductor began harassing her and threatening to throw her out. Near Mathura toll plaza, they wrapped her in a blanket and physically threw her out of the bus. She could not bear the shock of being treated in such a manner and she had a heart attack. I went to file an FIR but they said it is a natural cause of death. But the fact remains that the heart attack was caused by the behaviour of the staff. If you throw someone out of a bus on the suspicion of Covid-19 it is bound to affect them. At this point, we just want an FIR so that the persons responsible for this are held. She was the only daughter in the family and this injustice is intolerable,” the girl’s brother said, according to a report by a news agency.

The police, however, claimed that the girl was dropped off the bus like any other regular passenger. “The victim’s family had approached the police station and we got a post-mortem conducted at the District Hospital. The cause of death came to be a heart attack, which is a natural cause. Therefore, it did not merit any FIR or action. There was a coronavirus scare since she was unwell but the driver dropped her near a toll plaza so she could hail another transport,” an official reportedly said.