While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was advocating demonetisation as a measure to crackdown on black money in several sectors at a rally in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, a middle-aged woman in South Kolkata was frantically calling her relatives to find out about her husband’s body.
Her husband, Kallol Roychowdhury (52) a State government employee, passed away in a queue at an ATM counter on Saturday morning after failing to collect "few thousand rupees" for his son's admission in a local school, his wife said.
"He was desperate to withdraw a good few thousand rupees for admission of our son. But after a month’s effort we could only save about one thousand rupees, as he could not withdraw much cash,” Mr Roychowdhury's wife Sheema said.
He stood in the queue for long hours and often the banks ran out of money and he returned home “empty handed”, while the school refused to accept cheques, Ms Roychowdhury alleged.
Mr. Roychowdhury is allegedly the third victim of demonetisation in Bengal in last 48 hours. On Friday, two such deaths were reported from the districts of south Bengal. Rabin Mukherjee (73) and Bishhodeb Naskar (80) were both pensioners and collapsed in the queue while waiting to withdraw their monthly pension.
“Expected to get cash on Saturday”
The single storied house of Roychowdhurys in a quite neighbourhood of south Kolkata was abuzz with several media persons having arrived there. Inside the dimly lit room Ms. Roychowdhury was sitting on the bed with her 10-year-old son, Subhodeep. The last time she spoke to her husband was on Friday night when Mr. Roychowdhury boarded the train for Bandel (in south Bengal) from north Bengal, where he used to work.
“He said that ‘hopefully I will be able to withdraw about Rs 20,000 tomorrow’…his last words to me," said Ms. Roychowdhury.
“My uncle used to come to Kolkata every Saturday morning from north Bengal. Since he gets down at Bandel station to catch connecting train to Kolkata he went to the nearby ATM to withdraw cash,” said his nephew Sushobhon. At around 8.15 am on Saturday, the family was informed about the incident.
Mr. Roychowdhury, who collapsed after standing in the queue for more than half an hour, was allegedly left unattended for nearly 40 minutes. According to locals, the security personnel at the ATM called a doctor who advised them to take him to a nearby State-run hospital where he was declared brought dead.
