Hot, cold, and deadly: The human cost of India's extreme temperatures

In early January, a call was made from Delhi's Jhandewalan Night Shelter. The request for urgent help and blankets came from a sick man struggling to keep warm in the biting cold.

"By the time an ambulance reached the spot, the man had passed away," recounts Sunil Aledia of the Centre for Holistic Development (CHD), who has worked with Delhi's homeless population for decades. He fears this man, like most of the city's homeless, will end up as an unidentified name and number in the country's list of cold wave deaths.

Cold to severe cold wave conditions had gripped several parts of Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand in January, with red alerts issued by the India