Five-year-old sleeps next to his mother not knowing she was dead
Boy had accompanied his mother to hospital on Sunday night as she was gasping for air
The image of an exhausted five-year-old boy lying next to his mother on a hospital bed oblivious to the fact that she was dead, has left millions moved and teary eyed in India.
It took a lot of effort by the doctors and nurses at Osmania, the premier hospital in Hyderabad, to convince the boy that his mother had died. The boy had accompanied his mother to hospital late on Sunday night with the woman gasping for air. Realising that she was suffering cardiac arrest, doctors admitted her but despite their best efforts she died half an hour later without giving any information about herself.
Fortunately the boy carried an Aadhar card of his mother which identified her as a labourer Sameena Sultana who was deserted by her husband. The boy was also identified as Shoeb. “Even after the mother died, the boy remained asleep next to her and was there for two hours. He woke up only when her body was being moved to the mortuary. We informed the boy that his mother had died but he refused to believe and insisted on remaining with her,” said a hospital worker.
Volunteers of an NGO Helping Hand Foundation and the local police, when alerted about the matter got into action to trace her relatives and contacted her parents in Zaheerabad, 110 kms from Hyderabad.
As her relatives reached the hospital 18 hours after her death, her body and the boy were handed over to them by the hospital authorities.
Earlier, a postmortem was done at the hospital mortuary to remove any doubts about the cause of death. The NGO volunteers also found that the woman was living with another construction worker in Rajendarnagar area of Hyderabad. It is believed that when her condition deteriorated, the mother took her son with her to hospital by auto rickshaw.
Mujtaba Hussain Askari of HHF said that her last rites were performed by her family in Zaheerabad.