Bangladeshi woman returns home with son’s body only
A Bangladeshi woman, who was stuck at India’s Petrapole border with the bodies of her husband and son, finally returned home this evening with her son’s body only.
However, the woman, Asma Bibi, could not manage to bring back her husband’s body as she has failed to provide necessary documents in time, reports our Kolkata correspondent.
The body was kept at a hospital morgue in Bangaon, a town near India’s Petrapole border with Bangladesh.
The Indian authorities could not let her husband’s body pass through the border as the no objection certificate (NOC) from the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in this regard could not reach Petrapole border in time.
The NOC was issued around 4:30pm following the autopsy of Asma’s husband Mohammad Rafiq at Bangaon State General Hospital this afternoon.
However, the documents could not be reached at Petrapole border, 80 kilometres away from Kolkata, before its closing time at 6:00pm, said BM Jamal Hossain, a consular official at the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Kolkata.
The body of Rafiq, however, could be returned tomorrow morning, said a police official at Petrapole Police Station.
Asma Bibi and her husband Mohammad Rafiq, residents of Gazipur, went to India with their son Asad Mondol, 11, for his treatment. Asad was suffering from cancer for a long time.
On Sunday, April 16, 2017, Asad died at Renaissance Hospital in Teghuria area of Kolkata’s Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue. The couple barely managed the pain of losing their son, collected the necessary documents to bring their son’s body back to Bangladesh, and was on their way home on a microbus on April 17.
However, as they were getting closer to the Petrapole border in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, Rafiq could not bear the loss anymore as he kept crying, clutching his chest, and then fell ill.
He was admitted to Bangaon State General Hospital in Bangaon, a town near the India-Bangladesh border, and was later pronounced dead by doctors, reports our Kolkata correspondent.
Since then, Asma Bibi was stuck at the hospital with her son’s body in a coffin, while awaiting autopsy of her husband, which was conducted this afternoon.
“Primarily it appears that Rafiq had a cardiac arrest. But the actual reason behind the death could not be known without an autopsy,” Debashish Mukherjee, a physician at Bangaon State General Hospital, told The Daily Star earlier.
The findings of the autopsy could not be known till filing this updated report around 9:00pm.
Comments