Atleast seven people died onboard different Shramik Trains on Wednesday, 27 May, with the Indian Railways claiming that most of them were old and had gone to cities for treatment, said a report by Hindustan Times.
A spokesperson for the ministry of railways told HT that “a few deaths have been reported in Shramik special trains. In most of these cases, it is discovered that those who died are old sick people and chronic disease patients, who had actually gone to big cities for medical treatment and could come back only after the Railways started these Shramik Special trains.”
The statement of the ministry comes after a harrowing video emerged on Wednesday, 27 May, from Muzaffarpur station in Bihar, where a toddler is seen standing near the dead body of a woman, playing with the blanket that covers her.
There were several other cases as well. On 26 May, a 10-month-old baby with high fever and respiratory distress died on a Shramik Special train in western Uttar Pradesh, as the railway authorities were not able to provide a doctor in four hours despite requests from the family.
In another tragic incident, two people were found dead when a train from Mumbai arrived in Varanasi on Wednesday, 27 May, amid the COVID-19 lockdown. The train carrying around 1,500 passengers, arrived in Uttar Pradesh’s Manduadih, two days after leaving from Mumbai.
The Ministry of Railways responded to that by putting out a tweet saying, “It is reported that both the people who died were already ill. One of them, a 30-year-old man, was suffering from paralysis, and was undergoing treatment for kidney disease in Mumbai. The other person, who was 63, also suffered from other diseases.”
A report by ANI states that the railways have also urged vulnerable people not to travel on the train. The Railways said that persons with co-morbidities, pregnant women, children below the age of 10 years and persons above 65 years should avoid travel by train.
(With inputs from PTI, Hindustan Times and ANI)
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