Overenthusiasm shown by four nursing staff members to take a selfie with the dead body of Nandamuri Harikrishna, former Telugu Desam Party MP and son of former chief minister N T Rama Rao, cost their jobs on Friday.
Harikrishna, who received grievous injuries in a road accident at Anneparthi village of Nalgonda district on Wednesday morning, was brought to Kamineni Hospitals at Narketpalli, where he died within a few minutes.
The doctors asked the nursing staff members to prepare the body for post-mortem and left the casualty ward.
While readying the body of Harikrishna for post mortem, the four nurses, including a male, thought it would be a life time opportunity to take a selfie with such a celebrity figure, though he was dead.
So, they took a selfie with the body and a couple of them posed with smiles while the picture was being clicked. Not only that, the male nurse who clicked the picture posted it on his WhatsApp groups.
Within a couple of days, the selfie picture went viral in the social media and evoked strong criticism from general public and also fans of NTR and Harikrishna for the “inhuman behaviour” of the nursing staff. Needless to say, complaints were lodged with the hospital management.
And on Friday, the management announced termination of the four employees from their jobs.
“At Kamineni Hospitals, we take our patients and their family members' privacy very seriously.The latest incident is a major invasion of privacy. We strongly condemn this kind of uncivilized, inhuman behaviour. And we have taken immediate action against the staff members,” an official statement from the hospital said.
It further said: “We are deeply saddened by what went down and will work on making things better so as to prevent such acts from happening again. We express our heartfelt apology to the loved ones and supporters of Harikrishna garu.”