In a bizarre incident in Maruti Kunj, Gurugram, the police along with officers from child and welfare development forced themselves into a house. A woman named Munmun Majhi had locked her son for three years in her two-bedroom home there. Her son is suffering from Asthma and she did not want him to contract COVID-19.
She also stopped using gas cylinders and started using induction-based cooktops for cooking and heating food. She did so because she felt that she will have to get the cylinder change again and again and the worker with a gas agency who had dropped the cylinder at home could bring in the fatal virus.
In August 2020, her husband Sujan Majhi, who is an engineer by profession was called in for work as he had to go to the office every day, Mrs Majhi got extremely terrified that her husband could be the carrier of the virus of her son. And after that incident, she didn’t even let her husband get into the house for that period and the man had to rent another house in the same locality. But, Sujan made sure that he delivered essential food items to them regularly and also paid their other monthly expenses. Although, Sujan was aware that she is doing this out of motherly love Mr Majhi sensed that his son was in a deplorable condition, so he approached the Chakkarpur police outpost for help. When the police and counsellors entered the house, they found loads of garbage(human hair, peels of vegetables and fruits and wrappers) cluttered in the house.
Counsellors and Psychiatrists tried talking her out(via video conferencing) when she was inside the house so that they could make sure whether she is fit to take care of her son as she had imposed this lockdown of three years herself and asked her to step out of the house herself.
The major cause of her extreme fearfulness was her exposure to news on COVID as she kept reading about it and never actually let herself out of the house for 30 months. This doom-scrolling confined her into an echo chamber. Although, the Government and other mental health organizations gave a common suggestion to avoid excessive news consumption she never paid much heed to it. Since the boy was locked inside the house, his blood tests revealed that he had iron and Vitamin D deficiencies. She and her son, have now been sent to PGIMS, Rohtak for further assistance with issues relating to mental and physical health. Diagnosis made by a psychiatrist revealed that the mother is suffering from #delusional thoughts and will need multiple counselling sessions for treatment of her paranoia.
It will take a month or so for the boy to adapt to the situations outside the house as he is accustomed to wearing masks all the time. He will also have to develop social skills to interact with others as he has been in isolation for a good three years.
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