Adeeba 🦋

Ragini, 7, lost her left leg in an accident when she was barely 6-month-old. She limps to the government school in UP's Ballia. All she wants is a tricycle to continue her schooling. @dmballia

Veer was living with fear and pain every single day. When we rescued him, we found arthritis, chronic joint degeneration in his right front leg, and severely damaged footpads, each one a reminder of years of exploitation.

In Gr Noida, techie Yuvraj Mehta’s car plunged into a deep, water-filled construction ditch amid dense fog, after unmarked and poorly barricaded road concealed the hazard. He called his father, told him what had happened, and kept saying, “Papa mujhe bacha lo.” His father immediately contacted the emergency teams. Police and the fire brigade arrived, but they didn’t have the necessary equipment. So they started calling, someone called someone else, who called another someone. A full-scale calling festival followed. Eventually, even the NDRF team arrived. But due to dense fog and lack of equipments, they were unable to spot him. From the top his slowly submerging car, he repeatedly kept calling his father and saying, “Papa mujhe bacha lena, please,” and even kept flashing his phone light, but he was not located. None of the emergency teams had the courage to go down into the ditch and search for him. Finally, a Flipkart delivery guy passing by volunteered to go into the ditch with a rope tied around his body. He went inside, kept searching, and finally found Yuvraj. He marked the spot, though according to him, Yuvraj was already dead by then. He informed the emergency teams of the exact location, after which the body was recovered, approximately five hours after the accident, out of which he was alive for initial two hours. Locals and his family slammed the authorities for failing to install basic reflectors, barricades, or lighting at the known danger site, about which complaints had been raised earlier as well, and for the slow, inadequate emergency response, prompting an FIR against the builders and public outrage over glaring negligence. System to badlega nahi, lekin Yuvraj ka balidan vyarth nahi gaya. Authorities have now installed barricades and reflectors. Wahan Yuvraj ka putla aur banwa dein, to sarkari justice served ho jayega.