CUTTACK: Amid efforts to ensure the best of medical care to the survivors of the Bahanaga train accident, compassion has taken centre stage at SCB Medical College and Hospital. Shanyalal Majhi, a youth from Munger district in Bihar who arrived at the hospital on Sunday looking for his brother-in-law Suraj Kumar and three other family members, turned caretaker of another namesake boy till his family arrived at the hospital on Tuesday.
Majhi’s brothers-in-law Suraj Kumar (22), Mithlesh Kumar (25) and cousins Lalit Kumar (18) and Babusaheb Kumar (15) were onboard the ill-fated Coromandel Express. On his way to Odisha on June 4 morning, he was hoping against hope that his family members were alive. But that was not to be. Of the four, all migrant workers who were going to Chennai, only Babusaheb had survived.
“My cousin Mithlesh who was found alive by a rescuer on June 2 evening asked him to inform me that all of them had met with an accident. He died immediately after. The rescuer told this to me on June 3 and I took a train to Balasore the next day,” he said.
Midway, Majhi received another call from a doctor stating Babusaheb had been taken to SCB MCH while the three bodies were shifted to AIIMS, Bhubaneswar. He chose to look for Babusaheb first and search for the bodies later.
“When I met him at the SCB MCH, a doctor asked me about my native place. When I told him I belong to Munger, he said there was an 18-year-old named Suraj Kumar undergoing treatment in another ward without any attendant. For a minute I thought my brother-in-law Suraj was alive,” he recalled. But to his disappointment, the Suraj he saw was someone else.
Finding him lying on the bed alone with severe leg injuries, Majhi decided to look after him till his family arrived. “The boy had lost his mobile phone and could not recollect his mother’s number. The only document that remained with him was his Aadhaar card,” he said.
While the local administration was already on the job to ascertain the whereabouts of Suraj’s family, Majhi sent photographs of his Aadhaar card to his family in Munger who forwarded it to the police and local administration. Munger police traced his family.
Amidst all this, Majhi looked after both Babusaheb and Suraj and also took the latter’s responsibility during his surgery at SCB MCH. “He belongs to my land. I could not leave him alone and helpless,” he said. Suraj’s mother reached the hospital on Tuesday. Majhi’s father-in-law and uncle arrived at AIIMS on Monday and identified two of the bodies and for the third dismembered body, his uncle has opted for DNA testing.