A Railway Protection Force (RPF) jawan's heartwarming gesture has won a lot of praise after he went beyond his call of duty to help a struggling migrant and her 4-month-old baby aboard a Shramik train.?
The child's mother, Safia, was in a Shramik train which was travelling from Karnataka to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh.
When the train reached Bhopal, the mother requested RPF constable Inder Singh Yadav to help her get milk for her hungry daughter.
Inder Singh Yadav was busy making announcements on a public address system asking passengers not to venture out of the Belgaum-Gorakhpur Shramik Special train when she made the request.
The mother said she had been trying to get milk for her 4-month-old baby from Belgaum but could not get it. Asking her to ¡°wait for two minutes,¡± Yadav rushed to buy milk from a kiosk located just outside the railway station.
The train that was going to Uttar Pradesh¡¯s Gorakhpur stopped at the Bhopal station for only a few minutes.??
Yadav fell short of time but he didn¡¯t want the infant to go hungry, and so he sprinted towards the moving coach in order to help the infant, making it in the nick of time.
After reaching Gorakhpur, Safia sent a video message for Yadav to thank him for his help.
In the CCTV footage, the constable can be seen sprinting on the platform holding his service rifle in one hand and the milk pouch in another, to give it to the passenger in the moving train that was gradually picking up speed.
According to The Indian Express, posted at Bhopal RPF station for the last five years, Yadav was previously posted in Lucknow. Three years ago, he had helped out two children who were left behind at the Bhopal station.?
In a rather tragic incident, a four-and-a-half-year-old son of migrants from Bihar based in Delhi died at the railway station after arrival by a ¡®Shramik Special¡¯ train, while his father desperately hunted for some milk he believed will save his child.
Maqsood Alam alias Mohd Pintu, the bereaved father, worked as a house painter until the coronavirus-induced lockdown rendered him jobless and drove him to penury, forcing the family to leave their rented home in a Delhi slum and head home after selling off their meagre belongings.
The child had fallen ill, apparently because of oppressive heat. By the time our train reached Muzaffarpur junction his condition had deteriorated considerably. "I ran pillar to post searching for some milk for my son. The administration took too long to respond and the child lost the battle for life," alleged Alam.