Their baby boy took the bullet for his mother

Yet to know what life is, a one-year-and-one-month-old infant saved that of his mother by giving up his.

This tribal infant was Gesa Digal, one of the five victims who fell prey to police firing in Kandhamal district of Odisha on July 8 night.

It is alleged that security personnel had fired at innocent tribals, mistaking them to be Naxalites. Gesa’s father Luka Digal and mother Sunita Digal were also injured by the police bullets.

As Luka’s condition was serious, he has been admitted to the MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur, while Sunita is under treatment in Baliguda hospital in Kandhamal district. Both lament that they could not even attend the funeral of their child.

Speaking to The Hindu , Luka said e his infant son Gesu took the bullet that might have hit his wife Sunita. When the policemen fired at the auto-rickshaw in which they were travelling along with others, Gesu was in Sunita’s lap. A bullet pierced the child’s abdomen and grazed through the body of the mother. “Gesu died immediately but the bullet did not cause much harm to Sunita,” said human rights activist Narendra Mohanty, who was part of a joint fact-finding team that visited the spot of this incident of police firing.