Chatra (Jharkhand): In a shocking incident, a woman waited with a dead baby in her lap for hours outside a jail so that its father, who is behind the bars, could have a last glimpse at it.
The incident took place in Jharkhand's Chatra district on Sunday where the grandmother of the deceased child carried it in her lap and waited outside the jail to show it to her son. According to the inputs received from the ground, the woman had to wait for 7 hours outside the prison and even after that the jail authorities refused to let her meet her son forcing her to leave the spot.
Phool Devi, the wife of 27-year-old Chuman Mahato, a resident of Bandarchuwan village in the Vashisht Nagar police station area, gave birth to a child on Friday night. The delivery took place at a private clinic in Ghordauda, Pratappur. Both the mother and the child were doing fine after the birth but on Saturday night, the health of the newborn deteriorated. Being a remote rural area, there was no proper transportation, so the family decided to wait for the morning but the child didn't survive till dawn.
The baby's father Chuman Mahato, is lodged in the Mandal Jail in a case of NDPS Act for the last seven months. The grandmother of the deceased child reached the Jail with the child's dead body. From eight o'clock on Sunday morning, she kept mourning with the dead body in her lap at the main gate of the prison, but the jail authorities kept ignoring her.
At last, she was left with no option but to return for the last rites of the deceased child at 2 pm. When ETV Bharat asked the jail officials about the incident, they said they had informed the Divisional Jail Superintendent about the incident who asked them to follow the 'jail manual'. "As the jail manual has no provision for allowing family members to meet the prisoners on Sunday, that's why the woman was not allowed to meet the prisoner," said jailer of Chatra jail, Dinesh Verma.
