Click to play videoNew Delhi: A day after a CNN-IBN report, the Bihar government on Tuesday announced that an unauthorised mental asylum run by a quack near Madhepura town is being closed.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Tuesday took suo motu cognizance of the matter and asked the Chief Secretary of Bihar to inquire into CNN IBN’s report on the asylum and submit a factual report in two weeks. The commission also asked the Government what is it doing to do to rehabilitate the inmates of the asylum.
State Health Minister Chandramohan Rai said an inquiry by the chief medical officer-cum-civil surgeon of Madhepura found that the asylum was being "clandestinely and unauthorisedly" run by Mahadev Yadav.
Yadav has not even finished school but claimed he had divine powers and is able to treat inmates without modern medicines. Instead of administering conventional drugs, patients at the asylum are chained, spanked and bathed in cold water.
When a new patient comes to the asylum, he is taken to a hand pump, is tied to a tree and the hundreds of buckets of water are poured over his head. Yadav claimed that he has learnt from the teachings of saints and doesn’t need to know allopathy.
After CNN-IBN’s report on Monday, the Bihar government asked the Madhepura District administration to lodge an FIR against Yadav. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered an official probe after CNN-IBN showed footages of the "treatment" the pathetic condition of the patients and their torture in the asylum.
"We have declared the asylum illegal and the district magistrate of Madhepura has been asked to get it locked immediately," said the health minister.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) demanded immediate arrest of Yadav and said the authoritites should take immediate steps to shift all patients from the asylum to Patna under the care of a psychiatrist.
"He is breaking the law and inflicting pain upon the patients. This person should be immediately arrested," said IMA President Dr Ajay Kumar.
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