THREE DAYS after a 55-year-old woman died in Bareilly, allegedly due to lack of food even as the authorities deny starvation death, one side of the family’s polythene sheet-covered ramshackle hut at Nai Basti, in Fatehganj area of Bareilly, is stacked with sacks. These are sacks of rice and wheat, delivered on Thursday, two days after Sakina died — and days after her younger son, Shamshad, was denied ration at the local PDS shop since she was not present to give her biometric registration in the form of thumb impression. Shamshad, 18, said that the shop owner, Ahmed Navi, asked him to get “ammi (mother)” if they were to receive ration for the month. At home, where most of the space is occupied by two rotten cots and the sacks of ration, Sakina’s husband Mohammed Ishaaq said she was paralytic and could not move. While they earlier took her to the ration shop in a hand-drawn cart for the thumb impression formality, she was too ill this time to be moved, Ishaaq said. The family gets 35 kg wheat and rice per month for Rs 85 under the government’s Antyodaya Anna Yojana. Shop owner Navi said, “Ishaaq never told me that his wife cannot move, otherwise I would have got her thumb impression at their home.after all, we also have to complete formalities before distributing ration under the scheme. There are 80 beneficiaries under the Yojana here, and they get regular ration.” While the family said Sakina had not eaten for four days before her death, Bareilly District Magistrate R Vikram Singh told The Indian Express on Friday, “There is no doubt that the family is very poor but it is hard to believe that she died of starvation. She died early Tuesday morning, and was buried the same evening. Postmortem could not be conducted to establish the truth (cause of death).” Singh also accused the newspaper that first reported Sakina’s death due to starvation of fabrication. “The news is politically motivated to denigrate the government,” he alleged. To illustrate that the family was not in abject poverty, the DM said the family’s bank account — in Sakina’s name — has Rs 4,500. Ishaaq showed a bank passbook, with the last transaction of Rs 500 marked on October 8 and the balance at Rs 567. “I could not withdraw rest of the money since the bank employee told me that some amount has to be left. Or else the account will be closed,” Ishaaq said. After Sakina’s death, the DM said the family will get a house under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, and the local administration has given them five blankets. The family earlier had to make do with three pale cotton sheets to protect themselves against the cold. “We survive on whatever neighbours give us. My elder son Ashfaq earns Rs 30 per day (as an apprentice at a weaving unit).” Ashfaq’s wife Afroz said, “She (Sakina) never ate before all four of us had eaten. ‘Pati aur bacche kha lein toh main kha loongi (let my husband and the children eat first, I will eat afterward’, she would say.”
