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Twenty eight-year-old CRPF Jawan Jitendra Kumar was lying in the corner of a general ward in a private hospital in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. His mother, Rupa Devi, was holding his face close to hers.
Jitendra, however, could barely move his eyes. He was constantly gasping for breath. A food pipe was attached to his stomach.
Just to show that Jitendra still has sensation, his mother pinches him on the hand, and he instantly flicks it off. But the rest of his body is still unresponsive.
Constable Jitendra was injured in a landmine blast in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. Five jawans, travelling with him in the van, died in the blast that day in 2014.
Since then, Jitendra has been in a coma lasting 30 months. For the first two years, he was admitted in a hospital in Raipur. Early this year, he was shifted to a private hospital in Noida, which is listed in the panel of the CRPF.
His inconsolable mother asks him, “Look this way, my child. Look here, it's me, your mother!”. Jitendra, who can probably hear her, moves his eyes in response.
Unhappy with the medical facilities provided by the CRPF, his mother says she wanted her son to be treated in AIIMS hospital, but that didn’t happen.
The biggest CRPF hospital is on the outskirts of Delhi, has minimal medical facilities and only 100 beds.
There are over three lakh CRPF jawans out of eight lakh paramilitary forces in the country. Due to a lack of their own medical facilities, the CRPF depends on government hospitals and a few private hospitals for the treatment of their jawans.
According to the doctor, Jitendra was on a ventilator when he was brought to the Noida hospital, and has now been taken off it. Still, his improvement is slow.
The Quint has learnt from senior CRPF officers that currently Jitendra is getting his full salary of Rs 26,000 per month. His medical expenses are also covered by the government. But once he is discharged from the hospital, the CRPF doctors will examine his fitness. There is a high possibility that he will then be declared unfit to join duty. If so, his troubles will only be compounded in the future.
Jitendra has two siblings, a brother and a sister, who live in a village in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. The marriage of her daughter is now a major worry for Rupa Devi.
The CRPF is deployed in conflict zones such as Naxal-affected states, Jammu & Kashmir and the Northeast. This year alone, by September, 29 CRPF jawans have died.
It’s time the government start providing paramilitary forces with facilities equal to those provided to the Army.
Video Editor: Mohd Irshad Alam
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