24 babies born during journeys aboard special trains for migrants

Rohan Dua & Arindam Ghosh

New Delhi/Jhansi:  23.05.2020

When Kanti Banjari, a 21-year-old woman aboard a Shramik Special to Chhattisgarh went into labour, the nonstop train was halted for around 55 minutes at Pandurna Station near Nagpur so that she could give birth in a coach with medical practitioners in attendance.

The woman, who had boarded from Amritsar in Punjab, gave birth to a healthy boy on Wednesday.

As hordes of migrant workers continue to board Shramik Special trains, at least 24 pregnant women have given birth during their journey home between May 1 and May 21.

Of these, 16 new mothers gave birth in train coaches while others were rushed to hospitals just in time, railways officials have revealed. Madhu Kumari, 27, who gave birth to a girl aboard the Ahmedabad-Banda train on Tuesday, was helped by fellow women passengers who fetched buckets of water from the toilets and collected towels and sanitisers from others. Some of them helped prop Kumari over luggage to ease labour pain.

The newborn and the mother finally got medical attention after the train reached Jhansi railway station 110km away.For the father, Manoj Kumar, the entire journey is a blur.

“When my wife went into labour, I thought I would lose them both. I blamed myself for making this journey. But what other option did we have? There was no job or income left,” said the man, who hails from UP’s Raebareli.

Unlike Kumari, Subhadra, 23, aboard Jalandhar-Moradabad, and 21-year-old Mintu Devi on a train to Jirania-Khagaria were able to get medical assistance arranged by Railway Police Force (RPF) while they gave birth in coaches.

But for a 29-year-old pregnant woman aboard a train from Jodhpur to Basti, the journey home proved a nightmare as she went into premature labour.

“She gave birth to twins but one was stillborn and the other died shortly after birth. She was later admitted to the Basti Civil Hospital,” said a railways official.

In some cases, ambulances were arranged for women in labour when the trains were halted at the next station.

Subhadarshini Sahu from Odisha’s Puri was deboarded from a train and shifted to the district hospital in Jatni Khurdha (Bhubaneshwar), while in Agra Manju Devi from Etawah was also taken to a hospital.

In all, 13 of the women who gave birth hailed from Uttar Pradesh, four from Bihar and two each from Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

A boy born in a coach of Amritsar-Champa Shramik train