Srinagar, Feb 10 (IANS): The death of a Kashmiri Pandit inmate at the psychiatric diseases hospital in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar city the other day created a rare scene -- doctors and the staff at the hospital broke down like they would after losing a member of their own family.

A Kashmiri Pandit girl unable to manage herself was admitted by her family to the psychiatric diseases hospital in Srinagar just before the mass exodus of the community in early 1990s.

"She was with us for 30 years. She had become part of the hospital's extended family," Prof. Maqbool Ahmed Dar, head of department of psychiatry at the government medical college Srinagar said.

Doctors at the hospital said that the patient's mother occasionally visited her, but seeing the care and affection with which her daughter was being treated, the mother never asked for taking the daughter back.

When the patient could not be revived after a heart attack she suffered on Tuesday, the doctors called her sister who still lives in the city.

"The patient was given her last bath at the hospital as per the Hindu rites.

"She began her last journey from the hospital which was her home for the last 30 years and we accompanied her as members of the bereaved family to the cremation ground along with some of her relatives.

"We could not control our tears although seeing death from close quarters is part of our profession", said another doctor at the hospital.

During her stay at the hospital, doctors would call her by her name and she recognised every doctor by name despite her mental illness.

The final journey of this inmate of Srinagar's hospital for psychiatrist diseases will be remembered as a glorious chapter of human relationship and Kashmir's eclectic culture in the otherwise bloody history of mindless death and destruction seen the last over 30 years.