Four-year-old Vishal walked 30 km to New Delhi railway station with his parents and seven-year-old sister, Anjali. “We would lift and carry...
Four-year-old Vishal walked 30 km to New Delhi railway station with his parents and seven-year-old sister, Anjali. “We would lift and carry him occasionally,” said Vibha Devi, with the faint smile of a proud mother, “but he mostly walked on his own.”
The family had walked from Faridabad, a neighbouring city in Haryana. The journey had taken them two days.
They had come to Delhi in the hope of catching a train back to Bihar.
But four days after they reached the New Delhi railway station, they had not been able to set foot inside.
“The policed chased us away from the gate itself,” said Jitender Sahni, Vishal’s father. “They said general trains are not running, go buy AC [air-conditioned] tickets, but we don’t have Rs 5,000.”
Vibha Devi pleaded: “I said ‘take some money, let us travel sitting on the floor of the train.’ But they chased us away.”
The family is now living on a pavement, about 200 metres from the railway station. “We stay up all night, we don’t sleep,” she said. “What if someone takes away our children?”
While community workers have been distributing food and water bottles, the family has to pay to use the public toilets. The staff running the toilets also let them charge their mobile phone...
