UP minister terms child deaths at relief camps 'inevitable'

Adding insult to the injury of the Muzaffarnagar riot victims, a senior Uttar Pradesh minister on Saturday termed the deaths of scores of children at the relief camps “normal” and “inevitable”. 

“Marna shashwat hai...bachhe, burhe, jawan sabhi marte hain” (death is perpetuity...children, old and young-all die one day), remarked Minister for Sports Narad Rai, when queried about the deaths of children from cold at the relief camps at Muzaffarnagar.

As many as 34 children have reportedly died from cold in the relief camps at Muzaffarnagar. “It is not that children, who live on footpaths or relief camps, die and others survive...do children living in the palaces not die?”, the minister asked. “Our children also die,” he went on to add while speaking to reporters in Mathura on Saturday.

Incidentally, Rai’s comments come barely days after the insensitive remarks by a senior official, who had made a crude comparison while denying deaths of children to the people surviving the bitter cold at Siberia.

Principal Secretary (Home) A K Gupta had retorted on questions of death of children from cold at relief camps that none died of cold.