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Patna: An embarrassed state administration in Bihar has moved to control the damage caused by a goof up over the healthcare expenses of a man whom the chief minister had promised to look after.
The government has suspended from service Geeta Prasad, the director of health services, over a notice it sent to the family of Dashrath Manjhi to recover the expenses it had incurred during his yearlong hospitalisation for cancer to which he succumbed in August last year.
Manjhi, 80, had reportedly become a living legend by hacking a road all by himself while in his 60s through a rocky hill in his Gahlaur village in Gaya district, about 100km from here.
The government has ordered a probe into the embarrassing slip up of sending the notice to the impoverished son and daughter-in-law of Manjhi, who had worked day and night to carve the 120-metre-long road through the hill to eventually make a short cut from his village to a nearby village.
Manjhi had used chisels and hammers to make the tunnel that was 10 metres wide and 10 metres high in order to provide him an easy route to a hospital in the neighbouring village after his wife fell chronically ill.
The state government had borne the cost of his treatment for cancer at the premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi on the directive of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Tulsi Manjhi, village body head of Gahlaur village, said the notice was served on Manjhi's family despite the fact that Manjhi was no more. However, Tulsi said Manjhi's dream of seeing a black-topped road connecting his village to the nearest town remained unfulfilled.
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