Nashik: A 37-year-old COVID patient lost his life hours after staging a sit-in protest outside the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) building for allegedly not being admitted by many hospitals for treatment, officials said on Thursday.

Taking cognizance of the matter, the NMC Commissioner Kailash Jadhav has asked the Nashik Police to launch an investigation and find out who were the ones who 'instigated' the patient to go on the agitation. Babasaheb Kole visited several private hospitals seeking admission for COVID-19 treatment but was barred.

His inconsolable wife told mediapersons that "shocked by the apathy and attitude of the private hospitals", they took him to a government hospital where he was provided with an oxygen mask and cylinder as his oxygen levels had apparently fallen drastically. Subsequently, sporting a yellow T-shirt, blue jeans, wearing the oxygen mask connected with the black cylinder, Kole sat in a chair to protest outside the NMC building on Wednesday evening.

Sometime later, an NMC ambulance picked him up and shifted him to a civic hospital but by midnight, his oxygen levels had plummeted to around 40 per cent, against the normal 95 per cent. As efforts were made to revive him, Kole breathed his last around 1 am. The NMC and Sarkarwada Police Station are now trying to track the person/s who may have provoked him to stage the agitation, what were their ulterior motives and other aspects considering the fragile condition of the patient who ultimately died.

Guardian Minister of Nashik Chhagan Bhujbal has also ordered probe in this matter.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai-Pune-Nashik triangle -- is the worst-hit in the fresh Covid onslaught with the maximum patients and deaths recorded here. Maharashtra tally has crossed 28-lakh till date besides over 54,500 fatalities.

Last year, similar incidents took place in Pune where television journalist Pandurang Raykar (42) succumbed to the infection on September 2 as he could not avail good treatment due to unavailability of cardiac ambulance and ventilator in the newly set up jumbo hospital facility at the College of Engineering Pune (COEP) ground in the city.

In May last year, a 54-year-old heart patient had died sitting in a chair on the road waiting several hours for an ambulance.

(With inputs from IANS)