‘It was like being jailed': Retd UN official narrates nightmare of being packed off to Covid care centre

New Delhi: Pankaj Gupta tested positive for Covid on January 1. He was perturbed a bit, but how was he to know that was the least of his travails? Two days after the test, the 69-year-old resident of Greater Kailash I received a call from the district magistrate’s office and was hauled off to a Covid care centre in Chhatarpur, ostensibly for a few tests. On reaching the centre, Gupta — who was asymptomatic by then — was told that he would have to stay at the centre for at least 10 days.

- Shinjini Ghosh & Sidhartha Roy

PANKAJ GUPTA SAYS

Because I was told that I would be away for an hour, I didn't even have my medicines with me, which include blood thinners and blood pressure pills

Narrating the ordeal that followed, Gupta, a retired United Nations official, told TOI, “I initially refused to go to the Covid centre, but was threatened with police action. So, I asked them to send me an ambulance and I was driven to the Terapanth centre in Chhatarpur. To my utter shock, I was told there that I would have to stay for at least 10 days. Nobody cared that I had only come because I was assured it was only for some tests.”

The elderly Delhiite was indignant. “It was like being jailed, my civic rights being violated,”said Gupta. “How can I suddenly be picked up from home and put in such a place? The concept of an independent citizen in a democratic country is a myth.’