New Delhi, Oct 5 (IANS): Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday blasted the BJP-led Centre over the deaths of several persons in a government hospital in Maharashtra’s Nanded, saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should listen to the heart-wrenching screams of the poor mother.

In a post on X, in Hindi, Rahul Gandhi said, “Listen to these heart-wrenching screams of this poor mother of Nanded, Prime Minister. Why do you always punish the poor for your crimes?”

He also attached a video of the mother of a child screaming after the death of her child at the government hospital in Nanded earlier this week.

His remarks came after 31 people, including several infants died at a government hospital in Nanded till Tuesday.

Even the Bombay High Court on Wednesday took suo motu cognisance of the unusually high number of deaths in the government-run hospitals in Nanded and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar districts of Maharashtra.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyay and Justice Arif Doctor, taking cognisance of a letter written by a lawyer named Mohit Khanna, said that "deaths due to shortage of staff or medicines cannot go on".