Boy, 8, Seen Sitting With Body of 2-Year-Old Brother as Father Looks For Vehicle

6IX WORLD NEWS

Boy, 8, Seen Sitting With Body of 2-Year-Old Brother as Father Looks For Vehicle

In a heart-wrenching tale of helplessness and apathy, a young boy was spotted with a small body covered in a piece of white cloth resting on his lap, back to the wall and bundled on the side of a dirty road, in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena town on Saturday. Visuals shot by a local journalist showed eight-year-old Gulshan sitting with the body of his two-year-old brother Raja, as their father Poojaram Jatav searched for a vehicle to take them home

According to an NDTV online report, Poojaram, a resident of Badfra village of Ambah, had brought his 2-year-old son to the Morena District Hospital – around 450 km north of Bhopal – after being referred there by a local hospital in an ambulance. Suffering from anaemia and ascites – abdominal swelling caused by the accumulation of fluid, most often related to liver disease – Raja died during treatment. But the ambulance that had brought them had already

Poojaram pleaded with the doctors and hospital staff for a vehicle to take the body back to his village, around 30 km away. However, he was turned down and told the hospital did not have a vehicle at hand, and he would have to pay for one outside. An ambulance operator parked on the hospital premises asked for Rs 1,500 – an amount the single father of four could simply not pay.

Poojaram decided to leave Gulshan with Raja’s body in front of Morena’s Nehru Park as he went to look for a ride back home that he could afford. Gulshan sat there for around half an hour, with his dead brother’s head on his lap, waiting impatiently for his father’s return. Caressing the body, swatting away flies, a tear or two would roll down his cheek. Soon a crowd gathered and someone alerted the authorities.

Finally, a police officer named Yogendra Singh picked up the body and led Gulshan back to the district hospital where Poojaram and his sons were given an ambulance, at last, to make their way home, added the NDTV report.