Child Sits With Dead Toddler On Lap While Swatting Flies After Hospital Denies Ambulance

The video of a helpless boy in India went viral as he sat on the ground with the body of his dead baby brother on his lap. The boy’s father was desperately looking around for an ambulance to take the deceased toddler’s body home.

The distraught 8-year-old child was seen sitting near a drain line outside a hospital in Morena city, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. He held his 2-year-old brother’s body with one hand and swatted flies away with the other as he waited for around two hours for his father to return, Times Now reported.

When passersby asked him why he was sitting there, the distraught child said he was waiting for his father, Poojaram Jatav, who was going around pleading with ambulance drivers to help him transport his deceased child’s body home.

Jatav had managed to arrange an ambulance to bring his two-year-old son to the hospital in Morena but did not have the means to take the body home after the child's death.

Ambulance service of the private company contracted by the hospital reportedly charged between 1,500 to 2000 rupees, or about 19 to 25 dollars, which the father could not afford.

Jatav said he asked his 8-year-old son to sit next to a wall while he tried to arrange some means to transport the dead body back home, which was about 25 miles from the Morena hospital.

“The mother of the child is not at home. I am a poor man and I don't know what my child ate and his condition worsened,” Jatav told India Today about the circumstances that led to the toddler's death.

“I don't know what happened to him. He kept screaming all night. I took him to the local clinic which referred him to this hospital where he died. Ambulance drivers were asking for huge money,” the emotional father said, according to The Times of India.

Jatav said he asked this older son to “take care of the body and sit near the wall so that I could arrange for an ambulance.”

A crowd had gathered around the 8-year-old boy, and the police were informed about the situation. Officers arrived at the scene and ensured that the body was shifted to a hospital.

The attention the boy received resulted in an ambulance being arranged for free for Jatav to take his son home.