Visakhapatnam: Their painful cries continue to echo in ears

Visakhapatnam: It's hard to control the shrill cry of five-year-old Manideep as he was struggling with pain to keep his eyes open even for a short while. Her aunt Kalyani Sivakoti consoles him.

Manideep is one of the 52 children who got affected due to the poisonous styrene leakage from a storage tank at LG Polymers located at RR Venkatapuram village on Thursday morning. At the children's ward, King George Hospital, the condition of many kids unfolds an ordeal.

Manideep's brother Badrinath is getting treated in the same ward. "I fell in drainage and got bruised badly. We suffer from skin allergies too. The moment we realised what happened to us, we already lost our dad Govindaraju," shares an emotional Badrinath, whose mother is getting treated at another ward.

Badrinath says that his brother could hardly sleep last night due to eye irritation he has been suffering with. The only solace for the brothers is Kalyani Sivakoti standing by their side. "Fortunately, their mother A. Venkatalakshmi is out of danger," says Kalyani.

In a far corner of the children's ward, four-year-old Mohit sits silently on the bed. There was no one by his side except a nurse trying to feed a banana to him. A while later, Mohit's father Shiva came rushing to his son. "We were motionless when the incident happened and all the three of us (my wife, my son and I) got admitted to the hospital as we have fallen sick. Since my son refuses to eat, I keep visiting the children's ward to feed him and put him to sleep. My wife and I are getting treated in another ward," says a visibly exhausted Shiva.

Life turned topsy-turvy for many children who were impacted due to the toxic Styrene leakage at LG Polymers on Thursday. Some of them lost either a parent or both and a few their siblings. Even after leaving the ward, their painful cries continue to echo in the ears.