Court shooting on June 7: Lakshmi convalescing, injured mother unable to hold, feed her

Neelam, 25, mother to the one-and-half year-old gunshot victim, Lakshmi, has been waiting in the corridors of the Paediatric ICU of the King George Medical University Trauma Centre for almost a week now, ever since the murder of gangster Sanjeev Maheshwari on the district court premises on June 7.

Lakshmi and her mother were among the four (the other two were head constables) who also sustained injuries in the shootout.

While Lakshmi has undergone surgery and is said to be recovering, her mother’s wound (a bullet grazed her hand too), has still not healed. Today, she gingerly carries her arm in a sling, a bandage around her fingers. “My baby cries and I am not able to hold her or pick her up,” frets Neelam.

“One has to be very careful when touching her or changing her clothes now because she has two wounds on her body - one on her back where the bullet hit her, and the other where the incision was made to extract the bullet lodged in her lung. I can neither pick her up, nor breastfeed her in this condition,” says Neelam.

She is staying in the hospital with her husband, who is a farmer, mother, father-in-law and uncle. They have not yet been told when Lakshmi will be discharged from the hospital.

They suffered a slight bout of anxiety when a police officer on duty at the trauma centre gave the family the impression that Neelam’s treatment would no longer be free of cost, as he was not aware of the patient details. However, with the help of trauma in-charge sub-inspector, Sarfaraz Khan, and PRO on duty, the matter was sorted out and the family was reimbursed ₹550 that they paid for medication out of their pocket.

“Lakshmi is recovering, but she keeps getting spells of high fever - her immunity is not high, and she had lost a lot of blood on the way to the hospital which was almost a one-hour journey,” says Lakshmi’s uncle, Ram Bhajan, who works as a driver.

On the day of the incident, Neelam, Lakshmi, and the journalist helping them walked for at least 10 minutes before they were picked up by the ambulance.

The family hopes that they are given some financial aid as compensation for them to take care of any medical needs that might follow. They also hope that the administration will offer some protection, as they have been facing threats from neighbours over the land which they own (in Bakshi ka Talab), which is what took them to the district court in the first place, on June 7.

“Yogi (Adityanath) ji came to visit and brought a chocolate for Lakshmi. The district magistrate and some other officials had also come to visit initially,” says Ram Bhajan.

Gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s close aide Sanjeev Maheshwari alias Jeeva was shot dead allegedly by 26-year-old Vijay Yadav, alias Anand Yadav, inside the Lucknow district court on June 7.