Arrested Bengal minister insists on getting admitted to SSKM alleging health deterioration

Kolkata, Nov 15

West Bengal Minister Jyotipriya Mallick, arrested in connection with the ration distribution scam case, has now demanded immediate admission to the state-run S.S.K.M. Medical College & Hospital complaining of deterioration in his medical complications.

The demand of Mallick, the current state forest minister and the former state food & supplies minister, is that since he is feeling paralytic on the left side of his body, he as a state minister deserves to be admitted at S.S.K.M. since it is a state-run hospital.

However, state correctional service department sources said the team of doctors attached to the correctional home has ruled out the necessity of the minister’s admission to S.S.K.M. after thoroughly examining him.

Mallick is currently admitted to Ward Number 1/22 of the Presidency Central Correctional Home in South Kolkata, the same ward where former West Bengal education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee is currently serving judicial custody in connection with the cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

The two other heavyweight political inmates in the same ward include ruling party legislators Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha. These days the employees of the said correctional home often refer to that ward as “MLA ward" in private.

The jail authorities on Tuesday had also turned down Mallick’s plea for a pillow, bedsheet and mobile phone, claiming that under the prison manuals such items cannot be provided to the inmates. However, he had been provided with a book on the life of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

Mallick is also being provided with special diet food considering his diabetic condition.

Meanwhile, state Congress president in West Bengal and the five-time party Lok Sabha member Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has ridiculed Mallick for his demand for admission to S.S.K.M. “It has become a standard practice in West Bengal that the influential leaders of the ruling party resort to S.S.K.M. as a safe shelter whenever arrested by the central agencies. It is natural that S.S.K.M. is their favourite,” Chowdhury said.