Manmohan Singh apologises to widow:

PM’s security keeps dying man from care

INDIA: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apologised Wednesday to the widow of a man who died after being prevented from receiving emergency treatment because the premier was touring the hospital.

Singh wrote in a letter that he had heard desperately ill S. Verma “could not get access (to the hospital) in time because of the restrictions in place for my visit there.”

“This is something I deeply regret,” Singh said, adding he had ordered his security staff to be “more sensitive to the concerns of the common man” in future.

Verma, a 32-year-old with a history of kidney problems, was held up for two hours outside the hospital in the northern city of Chandigarh due to the prime minister’s visit on Tuesday, his family said.They said they were sent from one entrance to another by the premier’s protection teams, who ignored their pleas that Verma was in a critical condition.

“The security men didn’t allow us to enter and asked us to go to gate 2,” Verma’s nephew, Neeraj, told the Hindustan Times. “From gate 2, they asked us to go to gate 1. There again we were not allowed in.”

However, police and hospital officials dismissed the family’s claims, saying emergency facilities were kept open and that the patient was in the final stages of a fatal disease.

A spokesman for the hospital released the number of emergency patients admitted during the day and said they proved that all medical services had functioned normally throughout Singh’s visit. Police said that only “minimum traffic was halted”. Two Indian prime ministers —- Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi — have died at the hands of assassins, and Singh is surrounded by a constant high security presence. New Delhi, Thursday, AFP