Calcutta, Sept. 25 :    Calcutta, Sept. 25:  Gokul Bairagi and his neighbours were waiting in a huddle for three days for food to arrive. When it did, it came with death. Gokul Bairagi was crushed to death under sacks of chira and gur dropped by the army at Khanakul in Hooghly district. This morning the whine of an approaching helicopter sliced through the moist air, carrying in its belly food for starving Bairagi and his fellow villagers who gathered quickly on a dry patch of land. When the first few packets streamed down from the skies, they rushed to collect them. They were looking up at the sky to follow the path of the sacks being dropped by the helicopter hovering above them. Bairagi, too, was running with them. A sackful of chira and gur fell on him. Cut off by water all around, he could not be taken to a doctor. Bairagi died on the spot. Thousands of marooned people at Khanakul, less than 100 kms from Calcutta, have gone without food for about three days as the area is inaccessible. Army helicopters had also failed to make sorties for bad weather. In official records, Bairagi's death went down as one of the 418 people who have so far died in the flood. Two hundred are estimated to be missing. For the over-3 million people who have been affected by the flood, life was getting back a semblanc of normality in the 4,000 camps across six districts. Water is receding in Murshidabad, Burdwan, Birbhum and Hooghly. 'Nadia is still badly hit as the water draining out of Murshidabad, Burdwan and Birbhum is flowing through it,' Bengal finance minister Asim Dasgupta said. The swollen Jalangi, flowing through Nadia, caused flooding in areas that had not been affected so far. But, with discharge from Massanjore and Tilpara dropping to zero, the fear of fresh flooding has faded. 'Unless there is a recurrence of rainfall, the situation should ease gradually. But, with the high tide in the Hooghly starting from Tuesday midnight, the rate at which water will recede will decrease,' Dasgupta said. Deputy chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya, who surveyed the flooded areas with Dasgupta, blamed the Met office for inadequate warning. 'We have gone through the reports from the weather office and there was no indication there of such a deluge,' he said. After yesterday's police firing in Nadia to quell a protest, a report from still-submerged Katwa in Burdwan district said people demanding relief besieged the block development officer. 'What else will they do if they go without food for days and we can't reach them relief because of inaccessibility,' chief minister Jyoti Basu said.