SHRINATHJI and Murari Gas Station were the sole providers of oxygen to Lucknow’s hospitals—Shrinathji supplied to Lok Bandhu and Balrampur hospitals, Murari sustained forty-one others.
A group of policemen guarding Murari Gas Station opened up to me.
‘There are more than 500 people here. We understand their anguish. With hospitals turning them away and the government refusing to allow them to get oxygen from the plants, their miseries have doubled,’ one of them lamented. ‘Our hands are tied. We have been given orders to prevent them from entering the gas stations.’
Twenty-two-year-old Amritanshu Pandey, who had travelled from Jankipuram in Lucknow to the gas station, approached the policeman I was talking to. His father, Sukhdev Pandey’s oxygen saturation had fallen below 60. Amritanshu hadn’t been able to secure a hospital bed for him; he was isolating at home.
‘We rushed from one gas station to another, but none would refill the cylinder,’ Amritanshu told me. ‘In Lucknow, every hospital bed equipped with oxygen supply is occupied. There is no help.’
