Struggling to regain their lost identities, doctors at Kashmir’s only psychiatric care hospital are waiting for revival of a number of patients from within and outside J&K to connect them with their roots. And the fortunate among them have been left at the mercy of fate by their apathetic families who have shown no interest to take them back, Heeba Din and Uzma Manzoor report.
With one eye afflicted with cataract and the other moist with tears, not of grief, but of the old age catching up with up him. Gopal Krishen, 75, stared blankly at the stained, white ceiling inside Srinagar’s only psychiatric care hospital.
Lying on bed number five of Central Jail ward at Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences in Srinagar’s Rainawari locality, Gopal sheltered himself with an old, red blanket from chest to toe, leaving his shaved head with newly cropped up salt and pepper hair visible.
While the background was filled with sounds of a story playing on a small TV placed directly above Gopal’s head, he had no idea where his own story was leading him. It took Gopal ten long years to break the lull and regain his lost identity after being admitted at the hospital in 2003, the sole tertiary care hospital for psychiatric patients of Kashmir valley. When Gopal spoke his first words in the hospital, Dr. Mansoor, his resident doctor, took an initiative to connect him with his family.
It was after making 80 calls and browsing internet for four hours that Dr Mansoor Ahmad Dar finally traced the village in which Gopal lived. “Many people living outside Kashmir usually have varied perceptions regarding Kashmir. It proved to be a big hindrance in locating his whereabouts. It was no easy task to solve Gopal’s mystery,” Dr Mansoor said.
Gopal had arrived in Kashmir in 2003 apparently to pay obeisance at Amarnath Cave, a sacred site visited by thousands of Hindu devotees every year. Till date, there are no proper details about how Gopal Krishan got lost, where he was first picked up by the police and how he was brought to Psychiatric Hospital by officials of Rainawari police station.
The doctors at the hospital diagnosed Gopal Krishan with gross psychotic illness and for the next three years, he suffered from psychosis. Apart from taking care of his mental health, the hospital authorities also took care of his general health. During this time, Gopal was operated to remove cataract from his one eye and also treated for a brain stroke.
The mystery behind Gopal’s identity was finally solved when it was revealed that Gopal was unmarried and a treasury clerk hailing from Saharanpur in north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He belonged to an upper middle class family. The hospital administration traced his relatives which led them to his nephew, Rinky, a manger working at a super specialty hospital in Uttar Pradesh who promised to get Gopal back to his home. It has been more than 15 days now but the family has not contacted the administration.
“The hospital authorities should be highly appreciated not only for their efforts in treating this man but also for taking pains to trace him which should have been the job of the police and social welfare department,” one of the doctors at Rainawari hospital said.
Gopal’s is not an exceptional story. The Psychiatric Hospital at Rainawari has many such cases where patients have been abandoned by their families. While some patients have been admitted to the hospital with clear identity, some like Ghulam Hassan received their identity at the hospital itself. Hassan was picked up by Border Security Forces and referred to the hospital by Boniyar police station in north Kashmir. In his forties now, the unknown man now has two names, one which is still a mystery and the other – Ghulam Hassan – which the hospital gave him, till his real identity is revealed.
Like Hassan, there are many such patients at the hospital who were found in different parts of the state and were referred to the hospital by police officials. Mahjoor, 42, who was found in the forests of Uri in north Kashmir in 2000, is one of them joined by Qasim Bakarwal, a resident of Jammu, and Thapa hailing from arid Ladakh region who has been in the hospital for the last ten years.
The seminal thread which joins all these strangers is their obscure wanderings which led to their capture by the police. The tales are not only confined within the boundaries of the state but there are cases from outside the state which add to the list of abandons and unknowns. Like Gopal Krishen, Praveen, 45, a native of Gujarat is one such case. Admitted at the hospital for the last four years, Praveen willingly now engages himself in petty work within the premises of the hospital grounds. Praveen was stated to be fit for discharge on July 29, 2009 in a letter addressed to the District Magistrate, Srinagar by the hospital authorities. Despite continuous attempts by the hospital authorities, he is still struggling to go back to his previous life due to the negligence from both the concerned authorities and his family’s cold response to take him back when they were contacted by the hospital administration.
As per the guidelines, the hospital authorities are bound to keep such patients for a time period of six months after which they have to be sent back to their respective states or authorities which bought them in the first place to the hospital so that the process of relocation takes place.
The hospital has been taking care of such patients purely on humanitarian grounds for more than a decade now. While the families of the abandoned patients have shown a cold response, it has become a clich? for the hospital authorities to receive assurances from various social organizations who visit the hospital annually on World Mental Health Day, vowing to connect the unknowns with their families. But till now, no word has been kept and the patients still wait for reunion and rehabilitation.
While the hospital is doing more than it can, its administration stands helpless in the matter where families and the authorities have failed to do their job. However the authorities are not alone to be blamed. Poverty is another such evil which proves to be a big roadblock in completing the family reunion of such people.
Dr Arshad Hussain, a renowned psychiatrist working at the hospital said they are not bound to keep such patients enrolled once they are deemed fit for discharge, “However we are keeping such patients on humanitarian grounds.” When asked about the number of unknowns and abandons admitted at the hospital, he said that there are at least six such patients currently being treated.
While many people believe that such cases are considered as a liability by their families, life is playing an odd game with these patients whose future has got stuck in the official files. Every day brings a new hope in their hearts that one day they would be with their families but no one knows how sooner or later that would take place.
(Some names have been changed to protect the identity of the patients)
