In 2 days, 7 homeless in Delhi die in cold

NEW DELHI: A 35-year-old man dressed in a red jacket and blue jeans joined the list of "unknown" dead taken to the government mortuaries every day due to lack of an identity. The mark of piercing cold on his body showed that he had died in the open. But this also raised the question as to why he was left to die near a dustbin close to the Yamuna Bazaar-Pushta area on the busy Ring Road. The social workers who found his body around 1am on Wednesday remember him as an enthusiastic man who went all out to help them on January 17 to remove the body of another homeless found on the streets. Data by NGO Centre for Holistic Development (CHD) puts the number of deaths of homeless between Tuesday and Wednesday at seven. But the authorities are still figuring out whether they died of cold to release a definite figure on death toll this winter. TOI