Amid several videos highlighting the woes of migrant workers returning to Bihar, a video that has gone viral on social media shows a baby tugging at a sheet of cloth covering her dead mother at a railway station.
The body of the woman is lying on the platform, while two bags stuffed with her belongings are at a distance. The half-naked baby, seemingly unaware of the death of his mother, is seen plying with the sheet partly covering his motionless mother. An elder child with a water bottle in hand too appears for a moment in the video.
The heart-wrenching video is said to be shot at Muzaffarpur railway station in Bihar. No railway official has confirmed it.
However, a local journalist in Muzaffarpur told The Hindu that the woman with her two little children came to the station by a Shramik Special train on May 25 from Gujarat and upon reaching the station, she collapsed immediately.
The woman is said to have boarded the train in Gujarat on May 23.
She is believed to have died of extreme heat, hunger and dehydration. The chilling video went viral on social media on Wednesday.
Sharing the video on his Twitter handle, Sanjay Yadav, political advisor to Bihar’s Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Tejaswi Yadav, said in Hindi, “The little child doesn’t know that the cloth-sheet he is playing with is the shroud of his dead mother…this mother died after being without food and water for four days…who is responsible for such deaths in trains?...the Opposition should ask the hard questions or not?”.
Several such videos depicting migrant workers’ woes in Bihar have been going viral on social media of late.
Every day, lakhs of workers have been returning to different districts of the State by foot, on trains, buses, trucks, auto rickshaws, pick-up vans and bicycles — without timely food and water.
Many of them died before they could reach home, either in road accidents or from hunger.
Over 12 lakh migrant workers have returned to the State so far and a total of 27 lakh have registered with the government for their return to Bihar.