Couple Trying To Extort 7 Crore From IAS Officer Nabbed By Maharashtra Police

Muzaffarpur, May 27: A toddler's vain attempt to wake up his dead mother from eternal sleep on a railway platform in Bihar's Muzaffarpur on Wednesday presented the most poignant picture of the massive migrant tragedy unfolding across several states.

A video tweeted by Sanjay Yadav, an aide to RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, shows the child walking unsteadily up to his mother's body, tugging at the blanket placed over her, and when failing to wake her up, covering his own head with it.

छोटे बच्चे को नहीं मालूम कि जिस चादर के साथ वह खेल रहा है वह हमेशा के लिए मौत की गहरी नींद सो चुकी माँ का कफ़न है। 4 दिन ट्रेन में भूखे-प्यासे रहने के कारण इस माँ की मौत हो गयी। ट्रेनों में हुई इन मौतों का ज़िम्मेवार कौन? विपक्ष से कड़े सवाल पूछे जाने चाहिए कि नहीं?? pic.twitter.com/pdiaHuS9vf

— Sanjay Yadav (@sanjuydv) May 27, 2020

As the mother still lay still, he wobbles away from her, announcements continuing in the background about the arrival and departure of trains that would bring in tens of thousands of people in a rush to get away from hunger and hardship they face in large cities that could sustain them no more.

"This small child doesn't know that the bedsheet with which he is playing is the shroud of his mother who has gone into eternal sleep. This mother died of hunger and thirst after being on a train for four days. Who is responsible for these deaths on trains? Shouldn't the opposition ask uncomfortable questions?" tweeted Yadav.

However, police had a different story to tell.

Ramakant Upadhyay, the Dy SP of the Government Railway Police in Muzaffarpur, said the incident occurred on May 25 when the migrant woman was on way to Muzaffarpur from Ahmedabad by a Shramik Special train.

He told reporters the woman, who was accompanied by her sister and brother-in-law, had died on the Madhubani bound train.

"My sister-in-law died suddenly on the train. We did not face any problem getting food or water," the officer said, quoting the deceased's brother-in-law who he did not name.

He said on getting information, poice brought down the body and sent it for postmortem.

Citing the brother-in-law of the deceased, Upadhyay said she was aged 35 years and was undergoing treatment for "some disease" for the last one year in Ahmedabad. "She was also mentally unstable," he said.

When persistently queried about the cause of death, he said,"Only doctors can tell".

A massive exodus of migrant workers is on in several parts of the country, unprecedented in magnitude since Partition.

The humanitarian crisis still unfolding on highways and railway platforms has shone light on disturbing tales of entire families walking hundreds of kilometres with little children on foot in a seemingly endless march to escape hunger.

People have been found travelling on trucks and in the hollow of concrete mixing plants, and in many cases, dying from hunger and exhaustion before reaching their destinations.

Lucknow, Jan 21: Defending his brainchild, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said the new law will not be scrapped despite the countrywide protests against it.

Addressing a rally here to drum up support for the CAA, Shah also declared that construction of a Ram temple "touching the skies" in Ayodhya will begin within three months.

He said there is no provision in the amended law for taking anyone's citizenship away. "A canard is being spread against the CAA by the Congress, SP, BSP, and Trinamool Congress. The CAA is a law to grant citizenship," he added.

"I want to say that irrespective of the protests this will not be withdrawn," he added.

Shah challenged Congress leaders to hold a discussion with him on CAA at a public forum.

He named Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee while throwing the "challenge".

Congress has become blind due to vote bank politics,"he said. He also blamed the Congress for Partition.

Washington, Jun 30: Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.

Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.

It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans -- principally fever, coughing and sneezing. 

G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses.

Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4.

According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4 percent of swine workers had already been infected.

The tests showed that as many as 4.4 percent of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.

The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human -- the scientists' main worry.

"It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers wrote.

The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.

"The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University.

A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human.