KOLKATA: In an incident exhibiting the helplessness of migrant labourers, a farm labourer from Gosaba in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal was brought home by his friends on a train, travelling nearly 96 hours for treatment after being bitten by a venomous snake in Karnataka’s Bellary. Madhusudhan Sardar had gone to Kapur village in Bellary district for harvesting crops. He was bitten by a snake on the right hand while working in the field. His friends who accompanied him to Karnataka for work clicked the photograph of the snake to identify its anti-venom.
As they did not have much money and the hospital was far away, they took Madhusudhan to a local Ayurvedic practitioner who administered herbs on his hand and advised them to take him home. They took it literally and brought him back to West Bengal.
Three of Madhusudhan’s friends travelled boarded the Amravati Express to Howrah along with him. “They informed us about his condition only when he vomited blood while on the train,” Madhusudhan’s wife Kabita said. As he did not receive any medical attention for over 96 hours, the venom had started to break the red blood cells in Madhusudhan’s body and he was administered more than 30 anti-venom serum. He is said to be recovering.