Chhattisgarh women sterilisation: Baby breastfed from mother’s corpse

Raipur: The tubectomy tragedy of Chhattisgarh that has left 14 women dead and 39 children, including a dozen infants, motherless, has also witnessed some heartrending sights that would remain etched in memories of the beholders for a long time.

The most heartbreaking among them was the sight of the six-month-old girl wailing for breast milk of her mother, whose body was lying before her. The infant along with two of her kin accompanied body of her mother Chaita Bai, 26, to their village in the afternoon of November 11.

Chaita succumbed to multi-organ failures after undergoing sterilisation at Gaurela in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district a day before. “The baby was crying inconsolably for her mot-her’s breast milk while the deceased’s mother and her sister sat motionless before the stretcher on which the body was lying.

The baby had to be breastfed from the body for a moment to calm her down. Later, I got down at a place to fetch milk to feed her,” a policeman accompanying the grieving members said.

In a dilapidated house in Ganiyari village in the district, a tiny tot was among the mourners w-ho were preparing to receive the body of Shivkumari, 28, another victim of the tragedy. The six-month-old baby was made to lay a wreath on the body of her mother at home as per the custom.