Indian Politician Feeds Cow Urine to COVID Patient on Ventilator
By Courtney Brogle On 4/26/21 at 11:10 AM EDT
Viewers online were horrified to see viral footage of a man allegedly pouring cow urine into the mouth of a woman with a ventilator suffering from COVID-19.
According to ABP Live, the shocking video was initially posted on Twitter by Surat General Secretary Kishor Bindal of India's Bharatiya Janata Party last week. The video was subsequently deleted after it amassed nearly 80,000 views but was later uploaded to Reddit.
In the video, an unidentified man holding a bottle filled with yellow liquid is standing over an older woman struggling to breathe on a ventilator. The man then begins to pour the liquid into her mouth. He also tries to speak to her, but due to the noise from nearby hospital equipment, it is not clear what he says.
The yellow liquid is believed to be "Gau Mutra," otherwise known as cow urine. According to a report from Reuters, some radical Hindu groups like the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha have turned to cow urine in an effort to ward off COVID.
While the group claimed to "have never felt the need to consume English medicine" in the report, experts reported there is no evidence that cow urine can effectively treat or cure illnesses like cancer or COVID.
Indian reporter Deepu Sebastian Edmond tweeted about the incident on Friday. "What is this alleged [Bharatiya Janata Party] worker making a Covid patient, hooked up to a ventilator, drink?!" he asked.
He also attached a screenshot of Bindal's deleted tweet, which was captioned in Gujarati. In English, he essentially stated that a fellow member of the Bharatiya Janata Party was seen helping a COVID patient.
International viewers expressed shock similar to Edmond's after watching the video. Many on Reddit feared that, with the breathing tube connected to the patient through her mouth, she could potentially aspirate on the liquid.
"WTF? How can this be allowed in a place where science is practiced?" one Redditor wrote. "There's so much wrong here. That's just going straight into her lungs. Why did the hospital let him do that??" another added.
However, not all viewers were convinced that the unidentified liquid was indeed cow urine. Manish Agrawal responded to Edmond on Twitter noting that it could be a "mucolytic drug" turned a yellow-orange color once the colored tablet dissolved in water.
"It works by thinning the phlegm which makes it easier to cough, it clears the airways and makes it easier to breathe," Agrawal explained.
Another anonymous user hypothesized that it could be "ganga jal," or "holy water," that may have been colored with either medicine or food dye.
Neither Bindal nor the Bharatiya Janata Party has released a statement on the video. It was also not immediately clear if the unidentified patient in question required additional hospital care after she was seemingly force-fed the alleged cow urine.
This is the latest COVID patient care scandal India has faced this month. Last week, a heartbroken family received not one, but two false alarms that their COVID-positive father had passed away, before being told later that he was still alive and on a ventilator.
Many online allege that a man associated with his local political sector fed a woman dying of COVID-19 cow urine in a shocking viral video. MONEY SHARMA/AFP/Getty Images
