As the oxygen shortage in rises to an alarming level, the Modi-led Central government has turned down yet another request of the Punjab state government to import the life-saving gas from the ‘enemy country’ Pakistan.

The recent was the eighth instance when requests made by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and other politicians from the state to procure oxygen from Pakistan (after PM Imran Khan offered to provide oxygen on April 25) were denied by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Pakistan’s leading charity organization, Edhi Foundation has also offered to send medical aid amid rising COVID-19 cases in the country.

Despite these friendly gestures from Pakistan, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has refused to take any help from the ‘enemy state’ amid a lethal second outbreak of COVID-19, infecting hundreds of thousands of people daily.

Gurjit Singh Aujla, a Member of Parliament criticized Modi’s decision, saying, “This denial is proving to be deadly for patients in Punjab who don’t know which breath would be their last.”

Aujla was the first MP to write to Modi on April 26, followed by the chief minister Amarinder Singh on May 4. When Aujla did not hear back from the prime minister, he wrote again on April 27, followed by more letters on May 2 and May 5.

Chief Minister Singh also released a statement on May 4, saying that the central government had rejected Punjab’s local industry to import oxygen from Pakistan through the Wagah-Attari border near Amritsar.

The coronavirus infections in Punjab are on the rise. There has been a twofold increase in the past one month as the number of infections in the past 24 hours rose to 6,947 from 3,003 on April 13.

As of Tuesday, there were 73,616 active cases in the state, which are likely to cross 100,000 by next week.