Kolkata: It's a story that is Kolkata's shame.
At 6 am on Wednesday, passersby saw stray dogs pulling two tiny bodies from the garbage dump near the prominent Shamubnath Pandit Hospital. They allegedly shared the shocking information with the Superintendent of the hospital. No action was taken.
For the next eight hours, the foetuses lay on the road. One was completely devoured by stray dogs; the other was left half-eaten.
Finally, members of the BJP arrived at the site of unmistakable horror, and started protesting. Locals say it was only after this that the police arrived to remove the foetuses.
There are conflicting theories on why the foetuses were lying in the garbage dump. The Shambunath Hospital says they were left here by a local nursing home, and were not discarded by either its staff or its patients.
The hospital superintendent, who was gheraoed, has now promised an investigation. But his alleged callousness and that of the police ,which took hours to come to the spot, has left the city in shock. More shameful, perhaps, the fact that nobody in the locality tried to either stop the dogs, or to remove the foetuses themselves.