India COVID crisis: ‘A graveyard of the young’

A family in Delhi grieve the loss of their 29-year-old son who died from COVID-19, leaving a wife and newborn baby.

New Delhi, India – Twenty-nine-year-old Pradeep Gusain was overjoyed to become a father. He planned to throw a lavish party for family, friends and neighbours to celebrate the arrival of his first child – a daughter. But that would have to wait. In the first week of April, shortly before his daughter’s birth, Pradeep’s mother, 60-year-old Bimla Devi, had tested positive for COVID-19. Pradeep, a civil engineer, lived with his wife and parents in a small flat in the middle-class area of Vinod Nagar in East Delhi. But, fearing for the wellbeing of his heavily pregnant wife, 26-year-old Karishma, and unborn daughter, he tried to isolate them from his mother by moving into an adjacent house the family co-owned.