On May 18, 26-year-old Vijay Prasad returned home to Bihar’s Gopalganj from Surat where he worked at a textile factory. The journey back h...
On May 18, 26-year-old Vijay Prasad returned home to Bihar’s Gopalganj from Surat where he worked at a textile factory.
The journey back home was not easy, but it had to be done – the factory had shut and there was neither enough food nor money.
First, Vijay Prasad hitched a ride in an empty truck till Varanasi. From there, he walked to the Uttar Pradesh-Bihar border, according to his brother Murari Prasad. Thereafter, he hailed a bus that the Bihar government had stationed to ferry residents from the state who were walking back home.
On reaching Gopalganj, he was lodged in a government school that had been converted into a quarantine centre.
On May 30, Vijay Prasad died.
‘Unease and restlessness’
The previous evening, Vijay Prasad had called Murari Prasad complaining of a fever and a “feeling of unease and restlessness”. “Bhai, please get me some medicines,” Murari Das recalled his brother saying.
Murari Prasad arrived at the centre soon after to find his brother’s face swollen. He handed over some paracetamol through the window, the same way he had supplied food to his brother on two previous occasions. In fact, he had brought food for his brother earlier that morning too. He seemed to be feeling just fine then, according...
