Twist in 'Shinde Helped Patient' Story: It Was the Other Way Around

Yesterday, on June 7, headlines across major news platforms hailed Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as a saviour — the man who “rescued” a kidney transplant patient by flying her to Mumbai in his chartered plane after she missed her flight.

But today, the story has flipped.

Turns out, according to a Times Of India report, the reality is a little more complex — and quite the opposite of the initial narrative. The patient, 43-year-old Sheetal Borde, had indeed missed her commercial flight from Jalgaon. But what brought the chartered plane back into the air wasn’t Shinde’s intervention — it was Borde’s desperate need to reach Mumbai before midnight that prompted officials to get special permission for the pilot to fly, despite his flying-hour limit having already kicked in.

The Times Of India report that changed whole narrative

In fact, Shinde’s own return to Mumbai was delayed due to his attendance at a religious event. By the time he got back to the Jalgaon airport, his flight was grounded. It was then, and only then, that local ministers including Girish Mahajan were informed about the woman’s urgent medical situation.

As Jalgaon Collector Ayush Prasad later clarified, it was this patient’s emergency that led to the authorities securing special clearance for the grounded flight. Only once that was in motion did Shinde board the flight — alongside the patient and her husband — making it to Mumbai late that night.

Ironically, the kidney transplant didn’t go through — the donor-organ was not a match. Borde returned to Jalgaon by road.

What’s more, even X’s AI chatbot Grok echoed the earlier media version, stating, “Yes, the story is true. Shinde helped the patient reach Mumbai.”

So while the optics seemed heroic, the facts reveal a different picture. It wasn’t Shinde who made the flight possible for the patient — it was the patient’s emergency that made the flight possible for Shinde.