Couple's fight costs son his legs

Domestic quarrel of a married couple has cost their 7-year-old son his two legs and left him crippled for life. The minor is now struggling to survive in a government-run medical college hospital in Cuttack. His condition is stated to be critical. 

Puskar Goud and his wife, both migrant labourers from a village in the Ganjam district of Odisha and working in Karnataka, had a fight following which the man had left the southern state for his native village along with their son Karunakara. After arriving in capital Bhubaneswar on Thursday night, Goud died at the local railway station when he came under a goods train. Son Karunakara, too, had come under the wheels of the train but escaped. Though he survived, the train wheels had chopped off both his legs from the knee.  The railway police which rescued the Karunakara in unconscious condition and rushed him to hospital here initially thought the mishap to be an accident. Later, Karunakara narrated to police how his father jumped on the railway track when the goods train was approaching the station.

Puskar had tied Karunakara to his body. The boy also told the police that his enraged father left for Odisha after a fight with his mother at their workplace.  Karunakara was shifted from Bhubaneswar hospital to Sriram Chandra Bhanja Hospital, a bigger government run health care facility in the nearby town of Cuttack, after his condition deteriorated. The doctors in Cuttack conducted operation on his two amputated legs to prevent spread of infection.

The boy’s grandfather Khadal Goud who reached the hospital after he came to know about the tragedy from a local newspaper also confirmed to police that the relationship between his son and daughter-in-law had strained and both were fighting regularly.