An AIDS patient involved in an awareness campaign has been banned from staying with his family by elders in his Murshidabad village.
Twenty-six-year-old Ananda Biswas’s wife, too, has been denied a job at the local health centre in Nabagram, about 230km from Calcutta, because of her husband’s illness.
Since May 28, Ananda (name changed) has been living in a Behrampore shelter run by an NGO that had drafted him into its AIDS awareness drive three years ago.
“Apart from a few members of the health centre staff and my family, nobody knew I had AIDS. But when my wife approached Chattoraj for a job at the health centre on May 28, she not only drove her out but shouted at her saying she would not get a job because her husband was an AIDS patient,†Ananda said.
Ananda said he had lodged a complaint against Chattoraj at the Nabagram police station. His wife said two village elders — Somen Chowdhury and Dhanu Mukherjee — had threatened to ostracise the family if they protested.
“They threatened not to allow us to use the village pond or to buy our daily needs from the village shops if we continued to live with my husband. They insisted that my husband leave,†she said.
Tags: aids awareness, aids patient, amp, ananda, awareness campaign, calcutta, centre staff, dhanu, family, health centre, job, local health, my family, ngo, police station, village elders, village pond