Faridabad: Specially abled teen loses father to Covid-19, mother to suicide

In just over a week, a 16-year-old specially abled boy lost both his parents — his father died of Covid-19 and his mother committed suicide. The teenager has now been placed at a child care institute (CCI) in Gurgaon.

The couple were in their 50s when they adopted him as a baby, and they lived in Faridabad.

On May 14, his father (69), a heart patient, succumbed to the virus at Faridabad’s ESI hospital. A week later, his mother died by suicide. Family members said she had gone into ‘shock’ after losing her husband.

While his father worked as a mechanical engineer till a year ago, his mother was a homemaker. The child is visually impaired and has an intellectual disability, and is bedridden. A relative said the boy’s mother rarely stepped out of the house as he needed constant care.

Recalling the mother’s death on May 22, the relative said, “Ever since her death, we had been scrambling to perform her last rites while also trying to find shelter for the child. He knew that something was wrong… but he could not express much.”

In the meantime, he had to be admitted to BK Hospital in Faridabad after his blood sugar levels fell.

His relative said, “We tried to feed him a few times but he would not eat. We then got him chocolates as he liked them. When we were feeding him chocolates, he started screaming ‘ma, ma’, for 4-5 minutes… his mother used to feed him similarly. That was the only time he responded to anything.”

The family reached out to a child welfare committee (CWC) in Faridabad, which referred him to CWC, Gurgaon.

Upasna Sachdeva, a CWC member in Gurgaon, said, “After recovery, the boy was taken to a CCI at Deepashram. His condition is more or less the same. He only smiles when someone says his name. He is in isolation with a caretaker for the time being.”

The institute provides shelter to boys and men with special needs. If nobody from the family comes forward to claim him, the boy will be considered for adoption after following the necessary protocol, she said.

Sachdeva said many people have been posting about adopting children on social media, which is illegal, and they should ideally call 1098/100 or the state helpline numbers.