May 27, 2021 When Rajesh Pathak’s wife took their daughter to get tested for Covid-19 at a Gandhinagar hospital on April 1, she saw two plastic-covered dead bodies being moved out of the premises. That day, the government figures listed zero Covid deaths in Gandhinagar. The situation alarmed Pathak, resident editor of a 98-year-old local newspaper Sandesh’s Ahmedabad edition. Pathak sent his reporters digging. Sandesh journalists talked to sources at the biggest hospital in the state’s biggest city—the 1,200 bed Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad inaugurated by prime minister Narendra Modi in March 2019. With every conversation, their suspicions became clearer: there was a glaring gap in the Covid death counting at the facility.