Love and death: in the time of AIDS

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum members

The fight against discrimination should be intensified

if Indian PLWHAs want to benefit from the rollout of

the antiretroviral drugs

Love and death: in the time of Aids

(IANS)11 September 2005

KOLKATA Love in the time of Aids meant embracing

death together for a married couple in West Bengal as

the duo preferred to end their miseries instead of

dying a little of humiliation everyday.

Reports yesterday said in an act driven by social

ostracism, a 29-year-old man first poisoned to death

his 25-year-old wife and then hanged himself in the

Durgapur industrial town of south Bengal's Burdwan

district on Thursday. Burdwan is 158km from state

capital Kolkata.

Probir and Basanti Sarkar were a happy couple since

their love marriage four years ago. But in an

infection apparently caused by blood transfusion,

Basanti was recently found to be HIV positive.

The ordeal began with friends, neighbours and even

family members socially boycotting them after she was

diagnosed as HIV positive. The couple had gone to

Vellore in Tamil Nadu for treatment earlier and

Basanti was admitted to SD Hospital in Durgapur on

August 30 after she got pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Doctors at the Durgapur hospital said Basanti may have

contracted the virus from a blood transfusion 12 years

ago.

It was alleged that Basanti was even prevented from

boarding a cycle rickshaw by some neighbours because

of her infection and no one wanted to provide the

couple with a vehicle for taking her to hospital for

admission. Probir, who was not infected, could not

bear to see his wife living as a social outcast and

after Basanti's discharge from hospital they took the

drastic step.

On Thursday night after dinner, Probir gave his wife

half a glass of poison and after he was sure that she

had died, he hanged himself. Their bodies were

recovered on Friday morning, police said.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2005/Sept\

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and

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/sep112005/national173612005910.asp

______________________

Greetings from

Phi Huynhdo

E-mail: <huynhdophi@...>