Suffering from Mucormycosis, Head Constable shoots himself dead with service pistol

 

 

 

A Head Constable of Nagpur Rural Police, suffering from Mucormycosis, shot himself dead with a service pistol at his residence in Mankapur area on Saturday. He was under depression after losing eyesight due to black fungus, police officials said. The deceased was identified as Pramod Mergurwar (46), a resident of Plot No. 14, Niwara Housing Society, near Sparsh Hospital, Mankapur. According to police, Mergurwar joined the Special Protection Unit (SPU) on deputation a few years back. The family was infected with the novel coronavirus in May and also recovered from the infection. After getting discharged from the hospital, Pramod was infected with black fungus. He was admitted to Alexis Hospital for treatment. The doctors had removed Pramod’s eye.

 

Later, he was shifted to Hyderabad-based hospital as the infection was spreading fast. In recent days, he was unable to see from the second eye as it was also severely infected due to black fungus, a police official said. Since then, he was tense due to the life threatening disease. At 3 pm, he shot himself in the mouth and died instantaneously in a room on the first floor. His family members rushed to the room only to see Mergurwar lying in the pool of blood. Staff of Mankapur police station rushed to the spot and sent the body for post-mortem after performing panchanama. The official further informed that Mergurwar’s elder brother died 10 years ago. The brother’s family was living on the first floor while Pramod was staying on the ground floor with his wife Nutan, son Varun (18) and daughter Sayli (14). He was known as a person with helping nature. Another official informed that Pramod had come to meet him at his office before taking Earned Leaves (EL) in March. “He went to Akola and returned with the infection,” the official said. Mankapur police have registered a case of accidental death.

 

Service pistol brought from Police HQ In-charge of SPU Police Inspector Sunita Meshram informed ‘The Hitavada’ that Pramod went on leave in March this year. After Pramod was infected with black fungus, the doctors performed surgeries on him. “He used to suffer pain for a minimum of 36 hours after injections were administered by the doctors,” she said. Preliminary inquiry revealed that Pramod had deposited his service pistol before going on leave. Just three days before, he went to Police Headquarters with a friend and took the service pistol, saying he was taking the weapon for cleaning purposes. It may be mentioned that SPU jawans used to clean their weapon once in a month.