Bhopal: An eight-year-old boy, leaning against a broken wall on the side of a dirty road, is stunned, with his head on his lap, and the body of a child covered in a wet cloth is lying on the ground. A motionless hand extends out from within the cloth. The eight-year-old placed both his hands on Kunjanian’s lifeless body. A look of helplessness, of pity!
This is a picture captured by a local reporter from Morena in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday. Eight-year-old Gulshan and his father Pujaram are waiting for a vehicle. To bring the dead body of two-year-old Raja home. The family’s home is in Badfra village of Amba. Raja was brought to the district hospital in Morena from the local treatment center there. The ambulance that brought him had returned to the village.
Raja was very tired. As part of that, the stomach became watery and swollen. This condition usually occurs when there is liver disease. Raja died during treatment. Not even able to find enough money for his son’s treatment, he begged the staff of Pujaram Hospital, including the doctors, to find a vehicle to take his son’s body to the village, which is thirty kilometers away.
No vehicle was available at the hospital. The poor man had no money to pay for a private vehicle. The driver of the ambulance parked in the hospital premises demanded Rs 1,500 from Pujaram. Pujaram could not have given it. Pujaram left the hospital with Raja’s dead body along with Gulshan.
Pujaram left Gulshan in front of Nehru Park and looked for a vehicle. Gulshan was there waiting for his father to return. Locals gathered around him to see him sitting, wiping away the flies that had landed on his brother’s dead body and wiping the tears that occasionally rolled down his cheeks. They informed the authorities.
Finally, police officer Yogendra Singh returned to the hospital with Gulshan carrying Raja’s dead body. From there he arranged an ambulance for Pujaram and Gulshan to return with Raja’s body.