With no food at home for 3 days, 58 year old woman dies of starvation in Jharkhand

A 58-year-old woman died of hunger in a village of Giridih district, Jharkhand. According to the district officials, the woman’s family did not have a ration card. They are now probing to see whether a formal application was submitted for the same.

Savitri Devi died on Saturday and the investigation has started to see if the case is as simple as it looks. Rahul Dev, the Executive Magistrate said, “We reached her home on Sunday afternoon as we were not informed earlier about the incident. There was no food in the house and the family did not have a ration card.”

The officials are also probing why any of the family member was not getting any other government benefits. The village head of panchayat, Ram Prasad Mahato said, “Savitri’s elder daughter-in-law had come to me before 2 moths for the verification of her ration card application. I had verified it. But I’m not aware if she has submitted it in the block office or not.”

The younger son of the woman, Hulas Mahato said that his mother was not receiving pension in the last 3 years. According to him, the little produce they got from a small family-owned farm after his father’s death in 2010, lasted for a couple of months hardly.

“My elder brother was not getting salary regularly and I was getting paid stipend that was too little. The food grain was managed from a self-help group in the village, before it finished-off and no food was cooked in the house for 3 days,” he said.

A local dealer has arranged 50 kg of rice for the family after the death of the women. The family has requested the administration to cremate the body, instead of sending it for the post-mortem. A women’s self-help group had also provided 3 kg of rice to the family before the women died.