India COVID cases: Husband’s haunting act amid coronavirus chaos
The devastating ordeal of a grieving husband whose wife collapsed and died in India’s devastating COVID wave has been captured on CCTV.
A grieving husband in India has been captured on CCTV carrying his dead wife’s body more than 3km through the streets so she could be buried after she died of COVID.
The man, named locally as Swamy, can be seen with the body of wife Nagalaxmi slung over his shoulder as he walks through the streets of Kamareddy, a town in southern Telangana state on Sunday.
A husband was forced to carry the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for cremation. Nagalakshmi &her family eek out their living seeking alms at Kamareddy railway station in #Telangana. She died ysday&assuming that she died of #Covid,no one came to help them #WhereIsHumanity? pic.twitter.com/WfHVLWQu0w
— Syed Rizwan Qadri (@Qadrisyedrizwan) April 26, 2021
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Local media reports that police at the local railway station, where she collapsed and died, gave the man money to pay for her burial but refused to touch her for fear of catching the virus.
After waiting for several hours, he carried her body on his shoulder to the burial ground, where he performed her last rites.
Death toll sparks shortage of wood for funeral pyres
India’s coronavirus death toll soared through 200,000 overnight with a wave of new cases swamping hospitals and sending desperate families off to scour the capital for oxygen and medicine.
The vast south Asian nation of 1.3 billion is fighting a major surge of 360,000 new infections – a global daily record – and reported more than 3000 deaths on Wednesday.
Offering a glimmer hope, the co-founder of BioNTech, which developed a COVID-19 vaccine with Pfizer, said he is confident the shot works against the variant that is plaguing India.
In New Delhi, car parks have been converted to crematoriums and the body count has sparked a shortage of wood for funeral pyres.
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People desperate to get hands on oxygen and medicine
Relatives of the sick are crowding outside hospitals and pharmacies in search of treatment and medicines.
Priyanka Mandal, 30, has been searching for oxygen for her mother since she became sick a week ago.
“Medicines are also not available … I’ve visited five, six big medical stores,” she told AFP.
“No matter how much time it takes, I have to wait here … I only have my mum.”
Despite the raging pandemic, on Tuesday 25,000 people took part in the final bathing day at the Kumbh Mela religious festival in the northern Indian town of Haridwar, drawn to the banks of the Ganges by an “auspicious” full moon, festival official Harbeer Singh told AFP.
The gathering has attracted millions of pilgrims, mostly without masks, fomenting criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government for allowing it to go ahead.
- with AFP
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