Kolkata Warehouse Collapse Claims Migrant Workers' Lives, Family Devastated

Kolkata: By the time Rohit Kumar reached his village in Bihar’s Munger with the mortal remains of his youngest brother on Friday morning, he knew he could not stay to mourn.The 28-year-old spent Thursday evening and the night travelling nearly 500 km by ambulance from Kolkata to Mirjachak village with the mortal remains of his 17-year-old brother, Ghee Kumar, one of those killed in Taratala warehouse collapse.

After performing the cremation on Friday morning, Rohit began the return journey to Kolkata almost immediately. Another brother, Munna, was waiting to be brought home after his post-mortem, which delayed the release of his body.Even as Rohit travelled back towards the city, the family’s ordeal remained unfinished. Their cousin, Srijan Kumar, was still officially missing on Friday evening, believed to be trapped beneath the debris of the collapsed under-construction warehouse.

The family’s struggle, once defined by the search for a livelihood, has been overtaken by an unending procession of grief.Just a day earlier, he was outside the autopsy unit of SSKM, identifying the body of his youngest brother while anxiously waiting for news of the others. Now, instead of returning to work or staying with his grieving family, he was returning to Kolkata to collect another brother for his final journey home.

“Our family came here only to earn a living,” said Rohit on the phone before leaving for Kolkata from his village. “I never imagined that I would have to keep travelling this road to bring my brothers back one after another. They left home together to work. I am returning with their bodies. We are going through this ordeal just because we are poor and were forced to migrate”Six members of the extended family, including their father, four brothers and a cousin, were working at the warehouse when the structure gave way. Like many migrant labourers from Bihar, they chose to work together, believing that staying at the same site would offer support and security while earning daily wages to sustain their families back home.Back in Mirjachak, news of the second death deepened the despair that already engulfed the village.