Bihar: Actor Sonu Sood comes to rescue of two-year-old Nawada girl with 4 hands, 4 legs

NAWADA: A day after the Nawada administration offered help to a physically challenged two-year-old girl who was born with eight limbs, comprising four hands and four legs, into an impoverished Mahadalit family at Hemda village under the Warsaliganj police station area in the district, actor and philanthropist Sonu Sood on Saturday came to the rescue of the girl.
Call it ironical or derisive, the hospital staff of Mescaur public health centre where the girl was born in 2019 had named her 'Chaumukhi'. She was born with two additional arms and two extra legs protruding from her stomach, some two inches above the navel. Her mother Usha Devi said the two extra appendages have affected Chaumukhi's overall growth.
Sood came across Chaumukhi's plight on social media and called up local mukhiya Gudiya Devi's husband Dilip Raut on Saturday morning, assuring all financial help to the girl - from medical aid to schooling.
He also promised to finance the construction of a school and a hospital in the locality. Raut said on Sood's assurance, a 12-acre land has been earmarked for construction of a school and a hospital at Chandipur village under Saur panchayat. Chaumukhi's village also falls under Saur panchayat.
DM to civil surgeon: Provide help to girl
Chaumukhi and her parents left for IGIMS in Patna with Raut on Saturday as per the advice of Sood.
Earlier, unable to bear the hardships of life any further, the family had sought the Nawada administration's help on Friday.
Nawada DPRO Satyendra Prasad said district magistrate Udita Singh had directed civil surgeon Dr Nirmala Kumari over the phone to provide all necessary support to Chaumukhi when the distraught parents met her during the 'janata darbar' held in DM's office on Friday.
Narrating his woes to this newspaper on Saturday, Chaumukhi's father, Basant Paswan, 40, said his pelvis was broken from a fall from tractor in 1992.
Since then, he always remains upright and cannot sit. He gets relief only while lying down. The exorbitant medical bills of treating the broken pelvis had forced him to pawn his 4-kattha land for Rs 10,000 to his cousin Mohan Paswan which remains mortgaged till date.
Paswan's wife, Usha Devi, 35, a native of Kopin village under Hisua assembly segment, was struck with polio at the age of four resulting in permanent shriveling of her right hand.
Bina, 12, the first child of the couple and a Class VI student, was born without any deformity in 2010. But son Amit was born in 2017 with his left feet twisted 90 degrees inward. Things worsened beyond imagination with the birth of the second daughter in 2019 as she was born with four arms and four legs.
Outside civil SDO's official residence here, the sight of Chaumukhi grabbed the attention of the local mediapersons and her pitiable condition went viral. Bystanders chipped in with small coins.
Meanwhile, Chaumukhi's father Basant said the local administration had given him only Rs 10,000 of the total Rs 30,000 in 2008 for construction of a house under Indira Awas Yojna. Consequently, the house remains half-complete. Electricity, tap water connection and hand pump elude the family which survives on the monthly ration and Rs 400 government's dole earmarked for the physically challenged couple. "Even this amount has remained unpaid since March," Basant said.