In tiny Kolhapur hamlet without a road, elderly woman dies on stretcher

Kolhapur: Her neighbours tried their best to help, but 65-year-old Dagdubai Devane never stood a chance.
Devane was working on her farm in the tiny hamlet of Bendai in Kolhapur's Karvir tehshil when she collapsed in the heat on Sunday afternoon. Bendai doesn't have a phone signal. It doesn't even have an approach road, which means it can't be reached by bike, car or an ambulance.
The nearest medical centre, a small privately run clinic, is 10-12km away. The closest big hospital is 20km away.
So when Devane fell, her neighbours deployed the only thing they had — a makeshift stretcher — and carried her three kilometres to the nearest motorable road where they caught a phone signal strong enough to call a vehicle. "We managed to get her to the clinic, but she had passed," said Bendai resident Balu Katrat. "She fainted while working on her farm. If we had a road for an ambulance she may have lived," he said.
Bendai is a 'dhangarwada' or a settlement of shepherds. There are several such dhangarwadas in Kolhapur district, but Bendai is the closest to most towns in the region. Despite that, for years, the hamlet has not had a road.
"We only have that one stretcher," said Katrat. "Men switch while carrying patients to the road 3km away. Five years ago, a pregnant woman in labour died on the stretcher because we could not get her to a hospital in time," he said.
There have been similar incidents in other dhangarwadas too in the district. Three years ago, there was outcry after a pregnant woman delivered her baby in a stream while she was being carried to hospital. That incident had forced officials at the time to tour such hamlets to understand problems being faced by residents, due to bad road and signal connectivity.
On Monday, when state medical education minister Hasan Mushrif was asked about Dagdubai Devane's death, he said he would speak more "after collecting more details". "But we remain committed to providing the necessary funds to develop roads," he said.
Zilla Parishad CEO S Karthikeyan told TOI he has been informed about Devane's death. "I have asked the block development officer to look into the problem. We will immediately sanction a road if the village needs one. I have also told health officials to find out how she died. I'm expecting both reports by Tuesday noon," Karthikeyan said.