PATNA: In one of the most heart-rending visuals of the migrant crisis triggered by the Covid-mandated lockdown, a viral video showed a toddler trying to wake up his dead mother at the railway platform in Muzaffarpur, Bihar.
The child is seen pulling up a sheet of cloth covering his mother’s body in an attempt to wake her up.
The woman, 35-year-old Avreena Khatoon, died on board the Ahmedabad-Katihar (Bihar) Shramik Special train, on Monday. The body was kept on the platform till an ambulance arrived to take it to her home in Katihar district.
The video shows the child walking up to his mother’s body, tugging at the sheet placed over and covering himself with it. “This small child doesn’t know that the bedsheet with which he is playing is the shroud of his mother who has gone into eternal sleep. This mother died of hunger and thirst after being on a train for four days. Who is responsible for these deaths on trains?” asked RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s aide Sanjay Yadav, who tweeted the video.
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The deceased’s brother in-law told the media that she died after her health abruptly deteriorated, apparently due to hunger and severe heat. However, the Muzaffarpur district administration, as well as the Railways, claimed that she died because of a pre-existing ailment