In an appalling incident, a 65-year old man allegedly died of starvation in Latehar district of Jharkhand on Thursday. Reportedly, he was denied ration for three months because the point of sale machine used for biometric-based ration delivery was not working due to a network issue.
The district administration, however, denied any such incident had taken place and said the man identified as Ram Charan Munda died because of alcohol addiction. They had claimed he was discharged from the hospital only two days ago.
The villagers have claimed that from the last three days, no food was cooked in Munda’s house. They also alleged that the entire village had been denied ration for three months. The villagers said they had even complained about to the district administration. But to their utmost dismay, no action was taken.
Latehar: 65-yr-old Ramcharan Munda died allegedly from starvation y’day, because electronic machine used for biometric-based ration delivery wasn’t working. His daughter says, “we haven’t received ration since past 3 months. He hadn’t eaten anything in past 4 days”. #Jharkhand pic.twitter.com/m9pZbf8Cxc
— ANI (@ANI) June 7, 2019
Munda lived with his wife and a daughter and used to work as a daily-wage laborer. He was not getting ration for three months. No food was cooked in his house for the last three days,” said Afsana Khatoon, who runs MGNREGA Seva Kendra in the block.
Sub-divisional officer Sudhir Das has rejected the charges. He said “It hasn’t yet been proved that he died from starvation. He was provided all benefits like Ayushman Bharat Yojana, Ration card, pension. There is no internet connection here, so we are now working on offline distribution.”
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