Hyderabad: Ailing Varavara Rao's life in danger, feels family

Hyderabad: The family members of revolutionary poet Varavara Rao, who is in Maharashtra jail, expressed concerns over his deteriorating health and demanded the government to provide him better medical treatment.

In a statement here on Sunday, his wife P Hemalatha and daughters said that Rao's health condition has been a cause of worry for over six weeks now, "ever since he was shifted in an unconscious state to JJ Hospital from Taloja Jail on May 28," this year.

Even after his discharge from the hospital and sent back to jail three days later, "there has been no improvement in his health and he is still in need of an emergency healthcare," they added.

The family members noted that the immediate cause of concern now is that during the routine phone call that the family members received found that the poet was speaking to them in a weak and muffled voice, incoherent speech and abruptly jumping to Hindi.

The signs of fumbling, incoherence and loss of memory during the telephone conversations were strange and frightening, they said. Further, the latest call, that the family members received on July 11, was much more worrisome as "he did not answer straight questions on his health and went into a kind of delirious and hallucinated talk about the funeral of his father and mother, the events that happened seven decades and four decades ago respectively."

Rao's family members said that his co-accused companion took the phone from him and informed them that Rao was not able to walk, go to the toilet and brush his teeth on his own.

That apart, they were also told that he was always hallucinating that we, family members, were waiting at the jail gate to receive him as he was getting released. The co-prisoner told, the poet "needs immediate medical care for not only physical but also neurological issues.

The confusion, loss of memory and incoherence are the results of electrolyte imbalance and fall of sodium and potassium levels leading to brain damage. This electrolyte imbalance may prove fatal." As the Taloja Jail Hospital was not at all equipped to handle such serious ailments, the family members stressed the need to shift him to a fully equipped super speciality hospital to save his life and prevent possible brain damage and risk to life due to electrolyte imbalance.

They demanded the government to shift him to a better hospital or allow them to provide required medical care. And, said that the government that it was no right to deny the right to life of any person, much less an undertrial prisoner.