In the past 96 hours alone, more than 11,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19 across the country; in Delhi, the national capital, nearly 1,500 people died in that time
New Delhi:ย
On Wednesday morning the centre said 3,293 people died in the past 24 hours after being infected by the COVID-19 virus. In Delhi, the national capital, 381 people died in that time.
AN Yadav, 70, was one of those people.
Mr Yadav died at his home in the city’s Ranibagh area, his family consisted of a wife, who is also infected, and a young daughter, who told NDTV she’d tried desperately, and failed, to have her father admitted to a hospital for treatment.
For people like Neelam – who are unable to arrange a funeral either because they are scared, exhausted or cannot leave home because they too are Covid-positive – help arrives in the form of two young men, young Sikhs, who collect the bodies and make all the arrangements.
The images from Mr Yadav’s home leave you in tears – two men in PPEs lowering Mr Yadav’s body, wrapped in cloth and lying on the couch of a modest living-room, on to a plastic sheet on the floor.
There is no one else. Neelam is standing helpless outside the apartment building.
As Devender, one of the men arranging Mr Yadav’s funeral, and his partner, Pritam, struggle with body, they call out for help – to move it down flights of narrow stairs and into a waiting vehicle.
There is no help forthcoming because everyone is scared.
“How will two people take a body down two floors? This virus has killed our humanity… nobody is ready to help. We are here, no? Do we not have family at home?” Devender asks.
Eventually the two manage to carry the body down and into a waiting ambulance.
Devender and Pritam, who work with a relief organisation called United Sikh, have done this more than 300 times – 322 times, to be precise.
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