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In A UP District, Death From Hunger, As Governance, Social Security Collapse -Avantika Mehta

-Indiaspend.com

Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh: "CM-ji, my older brother died of hunger, please save me," hissed a skeletal figure in a video taken by freelance journalist Anoop Kumar on September 13, 2018. The emaciated face belonged to 26-year-old Feku, who fell into a coma soon after and died in a government hospital at 5:30 a.m. on September 14.

Residents of Khirkia village in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh (UP), brothers Feku and Pappu, a year apart in age, died within 16 hours of each other on September 13 and 14, 2018.

Both had been starving and ill for several months, their mother Somwa, a 50-year-old widow, told IndiaSpend on September 25. She stood near a small tent under which a priest and several men were preparing a bhoj, a ceremonial meal, to commemorate the death by starvation of her two youngest sons. Some local politicians and the village head (pradhan) had donated food after her sons’ deaths.

Both men had had "a fever, and their whole body would shake”, Somwa recalled, squinting as the harsh sun hit her weathered face. The family had not eaten in days, and her sons had had lesions inside the mouth.

Somwa and her family belong to the Musahar community--a Hindu ‘Scheduled Caste’ traditionally occupied as rat catchers, or, as a popular belief goes, a caste so poor that they chase mus or rats for a meal.

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