The death of 34-year-old ascetic, Swami Nigamanand, who died in Dehra Dun after fasting for 115 days to save the Ganga river from pollution and illegal quarrying, has put the BJP government in Uttarakhand in the dock.
Swami Nigamanand died on Monday evening at the same hospital where yoga guru Ramdev had been admitted but his demise did not attract government or media attention.
Nigamanand had started his fast on February 19 from Hardwar and had slipped into coma on May 2.
On April 30, the district administration forcibly shifted Nigamanand, a seer at the Matri Sadan Ashram, to the Hardwar District Hospital.
But even then, he refused to touch food when he slipped into coma, he was shifted to Dehra Dun’s Himalayan Hospital and put on life support system.
Hospital spokesperson Kulveer Rawat said that, “Swami Nigamanand died due to dehydration because of continuous fasting. The postmortem examination of his body will be conducted later in the day.”
Matri Sadan founder, Swami Shivanand, however, alleged that Nigamanand was administered poison and killed on the orders of those whom he had been opposing. Shivanand had lodged a complaint against chief medical superintendent of Hardwar District Hospital P.K. Bhatnagar and owner of Himalaya Stone Crusher Gyanesh Kumar at the Kotwali police station on May 11. In his complaint, Swami Shivanand alleged that Nigamanand was poisoned on April 30 during treatment at the district hospital, following which he went into coma on May 2. “On April 30, Nigamanand was given an injection of the poison, organo phosphate, by a nurse at the hospital after which he went into coma on May 2,” Swami Shivanand said in his report.
The BJP government in Uttarakhand, which had derived maximum political mileage from Baba Ramdev’s fasting, did not even take cognisance of Nigamanand’s death.
“This is the true face of the BJP. It is willing to be a part of the Ramdev drama but has no time for a genuine saint who laid down his life for the cause of Ganga,” said UP CLP leader Pramod Tiwari.