In its most poignant and miserable image the nation can witness during the lockdown crisis faced by the migrant labourers, a child was seen helplessly trying to wake up his dead mother at a railway station in Bihar on Wednesday.
Unending crisis for the migrant workers
The woman had arrived at Muzaffarpur station from Gujarat in a Shramik special train on Monday, and remained to starve there with no food and water to feed on. The woman allegedly died of hunger and extreme dehydration after spending long hours in the scorching heat.
The video that showed the piteous clip of the toddler trying in vain to pull the blanket laid on his mother to wake her up from her 'sleep' has been shared widely over the internet. The incident becomes yet another stark reminder of the migrant labourers' unending crisis due to the ongoing lockdown.
In the video tweeted by Sanjay Yadav, an aide to RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, the child can be seen unsteadily walking up to his mother's body, tugging at the blanket placed over her, and when failing to wake her up, desperately covering his own head with it.
As the railway announcements continue in the background on the train details, the boy totters away from his asleep mother.
"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? Shouldn't the opposition ask uncomfortable questions?" wrote Yadav in his tweet.
Police state another version
As loud protests started to rise on the incessant ignorance of these helpless workers, the police stated another frame of the incident.
According to the DySP of the Government Railway Police in Muzaffarpur, the incident occurred on May 25 when the migrant woman was on her way to Muzaffarpur from Ahmedabad by a Shramik train and died on the Madhubani bound train.
He also added that the lady, aged 35 years, was accompanied by her sister and brother-in-law and was undergoing the treatment for 'some disease' for the past one year in Ahmedabad.
The stories on the heart-wrenching plights of these daily-wage earners were widely covered ever since the initial days of the implementation of the coronavirus induced lockdown.
छोटे बच्चे को नहीं मालूम कि जिस चादर के साथ वह खेल रहा है वह हमेशा के लिए मौत की गहरी नींद सो चुकी माँ का कफ़न है। 4 दिन ट्रेन में भूखे-प्यासे रहने के कारण इस माँ की मौत हो गयी। ट्रेनों में हुई इन मौतों का ज़िम्मेवार कौन? विपक्ष से कड़े सवाल पूछे जाने चाहिए कि नहीं?? pic.twitter.com/pdiaHuS9vf
— Sanjay Yadav (@sanjuydv) May 27, 2020