A 25-year-old woman identified as Momita Basu from West Bengal has reportedly died in a private hospital at the Tikri border on Friday. Basu had been protesting against the Central government’s farm laws at the outskirts of the national capital since April 11, 2021.
Speaking about the Bengal woman’s death, Rajendra Singh Deep Singh Wala, a leader of Kirti Kisan Union said: “Momita came to Tikri from West Bengal on April 11 to join the protest. Four days ago, she was admitted to a private hospital after her condition worsened. The doctors found an infection in her lungs. She breathed her last in the hospital on Friday”.
Though the members of the farmers union are publicly claiming that Basu died of a lung infection, a journalist named Sandeep Singh has taken to Twitter to confirm that the lady indeed died due to COVID-19 related complications.
Girl had lung infection and COVID.
— Sandeep Singh (@PunYaab) May 1, 2021
He has said that Momita Basu had a lung infection and also contracted the COVID-19. The journalist confirmed that Basu’s death is the first confirmed case of death due to the COVID-19 pathogen at the Tikri border protest site, where thousands of ‘farmers’, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, have continued to protest, even as India battles a second and more brutal wave of coronavirus infections.
The ‘farmers’ had squatted on the highways leading to the national capital demanding the repeal of three agriculture bills that were passed by the Modi government in September last year. Even after five months, the so-called ‘farmer’s protest’, which has been proven to be nothing but a politically motivated game plan to degenerate the incumbent Modi government, refuses to end.
In fact, BKU leader Rakesh Tikait on Thursday asserted that the ‘farmers protests’ will continue and insisted that his drama at the border will continue despite the sharp uptick in the coronavirus caseload.
All this even when it was earlier reported that the ‘farmers’ protest along the Delhi borders and a number of Kisan rallies, meetings conducted in Punjab may have contributed to the alarming rise of COVID-19 cases in Delhi and surrounding states.
The UK strain of the coronavirus, which is markedly more virulent, is more prevalent in several northern states, including Punjab, the genome sequencing data from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) revealed. Two scientists from central government labs asserted that large gatherings in Punjab were responsible for the widespread transmission of the variant in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
