Man dies in ATM queue, becomes 6th victim in state

HT, 4 Dec 2016, KOLKATA: Kallol Roy Chowdhury became the sixth person from Bengal to die while standing in a queue in front of an ATM on Saturday.

Fifity-year-old Roy Chowdhury of Cooch Behar district, a state government employee, suffered a cardiac attack in front an ATM of a public sector bank at Bandel in Hooghly district.

In the past three weeks since the Centre scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, more than 80 deaths have been reported across the country that can be directly or indirectly linked to the demonetisation drive. While a few deaths have been out of shock, as alleged by the families of the deceased, some deaths are claimed to be owing to exhaustion after standing for long hours in serpentine queues. Sources told HT that Roy Chowdhury fell down on the ground and struggled for around 30 minutes before taking his last breath with none from the queue coming forward to help him or evening making an attempt to take him to a doctor.

Later, the security personnel of the ATM called a doctor who pronounced him dead and advised them to take Roy Chowdhury’s body to a hospital. Some vendors took his body to Chinsurah Imambara Hospital where doctors pronounced him brought dead.

“Unfortunate death toll continues... This morning Kallol Roy Chowdhury collapsed and died in front of SBI ATM at Bandel station. My condolences to the bereaved family. Is Modi babu listening?” she said in a tweet. Chowdhury’s death comes a day after two elderly persons died while waiting to withdraw cash from banks. Both the victims, Robin Mukherjee of Maslandapur in South 24-Parganas and Bhishwadeb Naskar of Raidighi in the same district, had gone to the bank to withdraw money from their pension accounts.

Trinamool Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien gave a detailed state- wise break-up of the deaths caused by demonetisation. The figure shows that 86 people have so far died because of the cash crisis. According to his findings, Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 23 deaths followed by Bengal at seven.