A septuagenarian lady, just out of hospital, was hounded out of a rented flat in Dhakuria by some residents for fear of “the spread of Covid-19 from an outsider”, her son has alleged.

The woman, paralysed for the past seven years, was admitted to a private nursing home in Gariahat for close to two months for acute arthritis and bedsore. She had to be taken out on Saturday, before the clinic was shut down because the Covid-19 crisis has led to the absence of many doctors.

The doctor treating the 75-year-old woman, a co-owner of the nursing home, said she “did not have any symptoms of Covid-19”.

The woman was brought to the ground floor flat of a building in Dhakuria’s Telipara around 3pm on Saturday. Her son, Bhaskar Sinha, had rented the flat because his apartment in the same neighbourhood “did not have the infrastructure to accommodate a 24X7 attendant my mother would need”.

By evening, he was forced to shift his mother to his old flat because the protesting residents did not budge even after a stand-off for hours and police intervention.

“I showed all the prescriptions and other medical documents (to show his mother was not a Covid-19 patient) to the police and they were satisfied…. But the mob of more than 100 people became aggressive, completely ignoring social distancing norms,” Sinha wrote in his complaint with Garfa police station over WhatsApp. “Most of the men were not wearing masks. Some of the women had towels wrapped around their faces. They kept abusing me.”

The Centre as well as state governments have stressed the need to fight the disease and not discriminate against patients, a point reiterated multiple times by chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Mobile phone caller tunes and public announcements, too, have stressed the same message.

Saturday’s incident shows how unsubstantiated fear running deep in people’s minds can create social fissures.

At least two residents who witnessed the fracas, the cops and the local councillor told Metro that a possible trigger could have been the door of the flat, which was locked from outside.

“We got a call. The caller said a woman was lying inside a flat that was locked from

outside. The woman’s son came after a short while,” an officer of Garfa police station said.

“The group that had assembled asked him to either take his mother to his own flat or live with her in the new flat. He eventually agreed to take his mother to his old flat,” the officer said.

The woman’s son has said that he sent a complaint to the police station over WhatsApp but no formal case has been drawn up so far, the officer said.

The councillor of Ward 92, Madhuchhanda Deb, said the problem started because he had locked the flat from outside. “People got suspicious,” Deb said.

Sinha said he had locked the flat after putting his mother on a bed because he needed to visit his own apartment, five minutes away, for a change of clothes and a shower. “I could not have left the door open with my mother inside,” Sinha said.

“The attendant who looked after her for two months at the hospital had agreed to stay with her at the flat. I asked her to collect her clothes and other stuff from her home (in Garia) and reach the flat later in the day. After placing my mother on a bed, I locked the flat from outside and came to my home. I had alerted the landlord’s father before leaving the flat,” he said.

He got a call from the landlord and rushed back to see “a crowd” outside the flat. “The mob would hear nothing. They had one demand — that I shift my mother out. When I finally sought 48 hours, a woman said they would not give me even 48 minutes,” Sinha told Metro.

He said he had called up the councillor for help “but in vain”. “I had to relent because the crowd was turning more aggressive every minute,” he said.