Heart-wrenching visuals of the boy, sitting with his brother’s body wrapped in white cloth were circulated widely on Sunday, 11 July. The boy was seen sitting by drainage, resting against a wall painted with slogans of ‘Swacch Bharat Abhiyan’.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Morena district, Gulshan, an 8-year-old sat for hours carrying the body of his 2-year-old brother, Raja, in his arms, while his father Poojaram frantically searched for an ambulance to carry the corpse home.
A large crowd gathered after people saw the boy sitting with the dead body on the roadside and alerted the authorities. The incident has been reported from Badfra village of Ambah. The health of Poojaram Jatav’s two-year-old son, Raja, suddenly worsened. Initially, Jatav made attempts to cure his son at home, but when his stomach pain became unbearable, he took Raja to the Morena district hospital. His elder son Gulshan also accompanied him to the hospital.
“I had four children, Raja was the youngest. When he wouldn’t stop crying, I took him to the Ambah hospital from where the doctors referred him to the Morena district hospital. My wife had gone to her parent’s house and I was only looking after the children,” Poojaram said.
Gulshan’s 45-year-old father, Poojaram indicated that the family was denied an ambulance because they didn’t have Rs 2,000. However, Raja died at the Morena district hospital. Poor and helpless Poojaram pleaded in front of the hospital authorities to arrange an ambulance to take the body back to his village, but his request was turned down.
Gulshan sat there for half an hour with his dead brother’s head on his lap, hoping for his father to return. Upon being alerted by the crowd, police officials arranged an ambulance and asked the driver to go to Poojaram Jatav’s home.
Poojaram Jatav told, “The mother of the child is not at home. I am a poor man and I don’t know what my child ate and his condition worsened. When I approached the doctor, he told me to give Raja Eno and asafoetida, which I did. But his health did not improve. I was being asked to pay for a vehicle.”
Meanwhile, Vinod Gupta, Morena civil surgeon, said, “We made arrangements for an ambulance. By the time the vehicle arrived, the father of the child had left.”
