Tehri Garhwal: Dhaba cook Kuldeep Kathait knocked desperately on the medical superintendent’s door. He wanted help for his 22-year-old wife Raveena, who lay writhing in pain on a wobbly steel bed a day after giving birth at the primary health centre in Pilkhi village of Ghansali sub-district. The superintendent shooed him away without even opening the door, Kathait alleged.

“He said the doctor will come in the morning and see her. He said he couldn’t do anything, so I shouldn’t waste time and should give her confidence to bear the pain,” Kuldeep recalled, his eyes brimming with tears. That night, 24 October, Raveena died. It was their third wedding anniversary.

This time, instead of mourning and resignation, there was anger. Raveena’s death came barely a month after another young woman

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