By Express News Service
BHOPAL: Tuesday’s bus tragedy in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh has caused irreparable damage to at least five families by snatching away multiple members from their lives forever.
While a young couple died along with their infant daughter, a young woman and her two-year-old son too lost their lives in the mishap. Another young woman on her way to appear for the ANM selection exam died with her brother in law, while a former Janpad Panchayat member and Congress leader was also killed along with her husband. The tragedy also claimed the lives of a senior Ayurveda doctor and his ANM aspirant daughter.
A family in Kusumi town of Sidhi lost four members of their family in the killer mishap, including 30-year-old Vishwanath Yadav, his 28-year-old wife Rajkali Yadav, the couple’s 3-months-old daughter Namrata and Vishwanath’s younger cousin Pradip Yadav.
“Since the COVID-19 lockdown, my brother Vishwanath Yadav, a guest teacher at a government school was sitting home sans any earnings. But his wife Rajkali was determined to improve the financial condition of the family by cracking the auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM) recruitment exam for which they were on the way to Satna by the bus. Since they didn’t know much about the exam centre in Satna district, my cousin Pradip who was a college student, also accompanied them,” said Vishwanath’s elder brother Jaganath Yadav, while taking home all four bodies for cremation.
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The accident claimed the lives of two members of another family of Sidhi district, including 25-year-old Kavita Yadav and her brother-in-law 22-year-old Kalyan Singh Yadav. A resident of Kathar Bodraha village in Gopadbanas block, Kavita left home with brother-in-law Kalyan early in the morning, asking other family members to tell her 3-year-old daughter Devanshi that she’ll be back in the evening after taking the recruitment test.
“But she’ll never return now, her husband and my younger brother Jeevendra who works in a factory in Gujarat are returning to Sidhi after coming to know about the death. We don’t know how to tell three-year-old Devanshi about her mother’s death, who is repeatedly asking us when will her mother return,” Kavita’s elder brother-in-law Subedas Yadav said.
The Saket family in Kukudijhar village of Sidhi district lost its head, 50-year-old government Ayurvedic doctor Ramsukh Saket and his eldest among the five daughters Amarjyoti Saket (22).
In Ward No.7 locality of Rampur Naikin town of Sidhi district, a private coaching teacher lost wife Pinki Gupta (25) and two-year-old son Atharwa Gupta in the mishap, in which his father-in-law had a lucky escape. “My wife and child along with her father were on the way to parents’ place in Nagod (Satna). My son was retrieved dead from the bus, while my wife was alive when she was taken out of the bus by the rescue team, but died later at the hospital. Had the rescue work begun in time, she wouldn’t have died,” said an inconsolable Anil Kumar Gupta.
The Tarka village in Bahri block of Sidhi district lost its former Janpad Panchayat member and Congress leader Sushila Prajapati (27) and her husband Pushpraj Prajapati (30) to the mishap. Sushila was on way to take the ANM exam like many others who died in the mishap.
The couple has left behind two kids — two-year-old daughter Ruhi and five-year-old son Utkarsh, who are now the responsibility of Pushpraj’s elder brother Prithvi Raj Prajapati.
