Who decides whether someone needs to be hospitalised? Most would think it’s the doctor. But in India’s health insurance maze, that decision is increasingly being made by the insurer. Syam Krishna, 34, an Assistant Commandant in the CRPF, discovered this unsettling reality in June 2025 and decided to share his experience with IndiaToday.in.
His son, Samarth Bhat, a four-and-a-half-year-old autistic child who cannot speak, fell critically ill in Tura—a remote town in Meghalaya over 200 km from Guwahati, with minimal medical facilities.
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Samarth first fell ill around two weeks before he was hospitalised at Apollo Excel Care. His initial consultation was on May 30, 2025, when doctors at the district hospital in Tura prescribed medicines for fever, vomiting, and poor appetite. But his condition did not improve much.
On June 16, Syam and his wife Spoorthi Bhat, an Assistant Commandant with the BSF who was then on child care leave from her Amritsar posting, took him again to the district hospital in Tura after his condition deteriorated further.
Doctors there then prescribed antibiotics, but the fever persisted. With the vomiting continuing and Samarth refusing food, his condition worsened.
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