A 17-year-old migrant worker from East Burdwan’s Purbasthali died in Gujarat’s Morbi bridge collapse that has claimed at least 134 lives since Sunday evening.

Habibul Sheikh, 17, a high school dropout, who went to Morbi to work at his uncle’s jewellery shop 10 months ago, visited the “hanging bridge” in Morbi with four other migrant workers from Bengal on Sunday evening.

“My youngest brother runs a jewellery shop in Gujarat’s Morbi. He told me late on Sunday that my son had died in the mishap. We had admitted him to Class XI after he passed Madhyamik last year. However, to help the family, he left school 10 months ago and went to Morbi to work,” said Mahibul Sheikh, father of Habibul and a sharecropper at Kesabhati village in East Burdwan’s Purbasthali.

Habibul and his four friends, who belong to Hooghly and Howrah, went to visit the hanging bridge on Sunday after it was thrown open to the public four days ago.

Sources said Habibul’s friends were injured and were undergoing treatment at Morbi civil hospital.

“Our shop and the market were closed because of Diwali. He came to me on Sunday morning to seek permission to see the bridge with his friends. It would have been better if I had said no,” Habibul’s uncle Sahibul Shiekh told The Telegraph over the phone from Ahmedabad airport.

Sahibul, who has been in Morbi for the past 10 years, is returning to his Kalna home with the body.

He said that the Gujarat government had arranged an ambulance for travel from Morbi hospital to Ahmedabad airport, but he had to buy the flight ticket and pay the cost of carrying the boy’s body.

“I am now at Ahmedabad airport with the body of my nephew. The Gujarat government arranged an ambulance to Ahmedabad airport. However, we had to buy flight tickets and pay the cost of carrying the body,” he said.

Sahibul said that apart from buying air tickets, he had to take a loan of Rs 55,000 from his friends in Gujarat to meet the cost of carrying the body.

“It would have been better if the Gujarat government had taken the initiative to send the body home,” he added.

The Bengal government has arranged a hearse to carry the corpse of the migrant worker from Calcutta airport to his Purbasthali home.

On Monday afternoon, Purbasthali North Trinamul MLA Tapan Chatterjee, police and administrative officers visited Habibul’s family.

“We met the family members and assured them that if Gujarat did not help our government will pay the money spent on bringing the boy’s corpse home,” said Chatterjee.

Asked what took him to Morbi, Sahibul said that it was a popular industrial hub of Gujarat.

Thousands of people from Bengal work there. Many from Howrah, Hooghly, East Burdwan, Murshidabad and Malda work in jewellery shops in Morbi, he added.

Sources said that the Bengal government had asked administration in districts across the state to find out whether anyone from the state other than Habibul had died in the bridge collapse incident.