Gorakhpur deaths: Oxygen supplying company's proprietor arrested

The Uttar Pradesh Police have arrested the proprietor of the company that supplied oxygen to the BRD Medical College Hospital at Gorakhpur, where nearly 30 children died in a day due to oxygen shortage last month.

Police sources here said Manish Bhandari, owner of Pushpa Sales that had the contract to supply oxygen to the hospital, was arrested on the outskirts of Gorakhpur town on Sunday morning.

Bhandari was produced before a district court later in the day which remanded him in judicial custody.

Police were on the look out for Manish after he was booked under several sections of the Indian Penal Code after a probe revealed that his company had stopped supply of the gas to the hospital citing delay in clearing its old bills.

Despite hospital officials telling the company that turning of the gas supply would result in the death of children, the company went ahead.

With Bhandari’s arrest, the number of people in custody in the case has gone up to nine. The principal of the college, suspended after the tragedy, is also in jail.

Thirty children, mostly newborns, died in the space of 36 hours between August 10 and 11, owing to depletion in oxygen supply. The tragedy sparked off national outrage and handed much needed ammunition to the opposition to attack the BJP government.

Amid calls of Yogi Adityanath’s resignation, a high-level probe over the incident denied that the children’s deaths were not due to oxygen shortage.