Twelve-year-old Ashraful Haque — his head bandaged and his left hand cast in plaster — lay on one of the beds of the male surgical ward of the Suri Hospital on Monday, quite perplexed.
Sold off to beg
Ashraful, a victim of the train accident at Sainthia Junction station, who said that he had been sold off by his parents, was travelling with an unknown person in one of the general compartments of the Ranchi-bound Vananchal Express to earn a livelihood by begging.
“I was travelling with a blind person who was taking me from Samsi in Malda district to Ranchi. My parents had agreed to his offer and asked me to accompany him to Ranchi so that I could beg and earn some money,” Ashraful said.
The person with whom he was travelling is still missing.
His father, Intaj Haque, is a farm labourer at Samsi and has been unreachable on his mobile phone since the accident.
Ashraful is now being looked after by a few local National Cadet Corps cadets.
Sixteen-year-old Sarita Marandi, a resident of Kherwa in Bihar, was travelling to Ranchi with her younger brother, to meet her elder brother who studies there.
Sarita, visibly overwhelmed, said that she had not heard of her brother since she had regained consciousness in the hospital.
