UP Woman, 5 Children Went Hungry For 2 Months; No Ration, Aadhaar Cards -Alok Pandey

-NDTV.com

A senior Aligarh official expressed "surprise" over the fact that the family members had neither a ration card nor Aadhar cards.

Aligarh: A 45-year-old woman and her five children are in hospital in western Uttar Pradesh's Aligarh town after battling intense hunger for over two months. They were able to get medical help after a local NGO stepped in to help after it was informed of the family's condition.The family members had neither a ration card nor Aadhar cards, with a senior Aligarh official expressing "surprise" and saying he had ordered a probe.

Guddi, whose husband died last year during the lockdown imposed due to the first wave of the Covid pandemic, and her family are very weak and unable to walk, said doctors who attended to them on Wednesday at the Aligarh district hospital.

Her eldest child is 20, a mason, and is the sole earning member of the family. He lost his job during the second wave of the pandemic this year.

"We are giving them porridge and other nutritious food. But there is nothing to worry. They will recover," Dr Amit, the emergency ward in-charge at the hospital, told reporters.

Visuals from the hospital ward where the family is admitted showed one of Guddi's children, a young boy eating an apple, with NGO workers, doctors and the media looking on. Another clip shot by local journalists showed a slightly older boy taking off his shirt to show an extremely brittle body with bones jutting out from the flesh. A third clip showed a girl with a drip on her hands through which glucose was being administered.

"There was nothing at home. It has been the case for three months. Hunger and disease both affected us. We used to go to our neighbours to ask for food, but they said they can feed us for a day or two, but that they cannot feed us everyday. Then we stopped asking," Guddi said when asked about how the family had come to this state.

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