MNS aftermath: Woman gives birth in train toilet

A fear-stricken woman of Bihar gave birth to a child in the toilet of running train after being forced to flee Nashik

Nagma Bano, who fled in the wake of increasing attacks against North Indians, gave birth to a child in the toilet of the running train on Wednesday.

Her pain and misery is not an isolated case. She is one of hundreds of North Indians who were forced to flee Nashik, where they have been earning their livelihood.

Bano fled with her husband Mohammed Nazir, like other North Indians, on the Bhagalpur-Lokmanya Tilak Express.

"When we fled Nashik and boarded the Bihar-bound train, she was well and healthy but during the difficult journey she suddenly develop labour pain. I took her to the toilet where she gave birth to a child," Nazir, who used to work as daily labourer in Nashik, told rediff.com in the crowded bogie of the train on Patna railway station.

Intitially reluctant, Bano, holding her newly born child in her lap, said that she never imagined that she would be compelled to deliver her child in the toilet of a running train.

"It is all luck. We are poor and lower class people. I have not eaten since yesterday. We do not have the money to buy anything," she said.

Nazir said& they were going to Bhagalpur where his native village was located. "First poverty forced us to leave the village to migrate outside to earn our livelihood. But now the fear of violence has forced us to return to village. It is our story, what else," he said.

Nazir said North Indians in Nashik and elsewhere in Maharashtra were fleeing due to fear of violence and threat to life .

"All the North India-bound trains are full of migrant people," he said.

Trains such as the Bhagalpur Express, Patna Express, Superfast Janta, Gorakhpur via Lucknow Mahanagar and other North India-bound trains were overcrowded with the migrants.

Santosh Singh, another man who fled with his family, said over 10,000 people have left Nashik since Monday due to increasing attack on North Indians.

"When we entered Nashik railway station on Monday, it was flooded with migrants and there was hardly any place to even stand on the platforms," he said.

Singh, who hails from Banka district in Bihar, used to work as a skilled worker in a factory in Nashik.

"No doubt we were forced to flee, but it would badly hit economic activities in Nashik. Some of the small- and medium-sized industries in the Ambad industrial area would face shortage of manpower," Singh said.