DYING IN STREETS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 72, 22 September 1943, Page 5

DYING IN STREETS

STARVED PEOPLE OF BENGAL LONDON, September 21. People are still dying from starvation in the streets of Calcutta and other towns in Bengal in spite of the authorities' urgent measures to improve the food situation, reports Reuters Calcutta correspondent. More than 1200 bodies were disposed of in Calcutta for the period August 1 to September 18 and more than 3500 cases were admitted to hospital between August 16 and September 16. For the three days ended September 19 55 persons were taken to hospital and 166 patients died. Reuters correspondent on the Bengal-Assam frontier says that hundreds of famished and destitute men, women, and children from south and east Bengal are arriving daily and they wander from door to door, look like moving skeletons, and beg for morsels of food. The Bengal Government has announced that 2500 free kitchens feeding 65,000 people are now operating throughout the province. A further 1700 kitchens will be operating within a week. A sum equivalent to £6,625,000 has already been spent on relief work.

Mrs. Ray, a woman member of the Central Legislative Assembly, said that the devastation in the country districts was heartrending. Half the population would die from starvation unless widespread relief was organised immediately. The leader of an extreme Moslem organisation, Mr. Khaksar, appealed to his followers to arrange for the maintenance in various relief centres of 600,000 children, irrespective of caste and religion. .