Hyderabad: Despite the Centre running chargeable ‘Shramik Special’ train services for the migrant workers seeking to go home amid the more than a month-long coronavirus-induced lockdown, several migrants continue to walk, cycle, or load up on packed trucks, cement mixers, and so on, to get home.
On the way, many of these desperate, exhausted, penniless, and starving migrants have died and suffered injuries in accidents while undertaking these arduous hundreds of kilometres-long journey to their native villages.
While there is no data to show the exact number of migrants leaving the urban spaces and dying or getting injured on the way, let’s take a look at some of the incidents reported by the media in recent days to get a fair idea about the extent of the disaster.
- May 16: 24 migrant workers were killed and 36 were injured after a truck rammed into a DCM lorry they were travelling in. The incident took place in Auraiya district in Uttar Pradesh at around 3:30 am.
- May 14: Eight Labourers died and over 54 suffered injuries after the truck they were travelling in was hit by a speeding bus in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna.
- May 13: Six migrant labourers walking from Haryana to Bihar in a group of 16 were mowed down by a speeding bus on the Muzaffarnagar- Saharanpur state highway in Uttar Pradesh.
- May 9: Five labourers were killed and 13 injured when a truck in which they were travelling overturned in Madhya Pradesh Narsinghpur district.
- May 8: 15 migrant workers, who were sleeping on the railway tracks while going back to their native places were run over by goods train between Maharashtra's Jalna and Aurangabad
- May 5: Seven workers, all residents of Chatarpur district in Madhya Pradesh, were killed and two others seriously injured, when the auto in which they were travelling collided with a truck in UP's Mathura district.
- May 3: Six migrant workers on their way back to Odisha were injured in two separate bus accidents in Maharashtra and Odisha. In the first incident the bus, with 50 Odia migrant workers left from Surat (Gujarat) and fell in a roadside ditch on the Nagpur-Amravati National Highway in Maharashtra. In the second incident, another bus carrying 50 migrant workers from Surat to Ganjam, hit a roadside curb at Kalinga Ghati hilly road, leaving three people injured.
- May 1: A 35-year-old migrant worker who was on his way back to Bihar from Delhi on his bicycle with a group died on National Highway-24 in Shahjahanpur after his condition suddenly deteriorated
- April 29: A group of 11 labourers on bicycles lost one of their group members, Tabarak Ansari, in the Bijasen area of Madhya Pradesh’s Barwani district on the Maharashtra-MP border.
- April 28:A 45-year-old asthmatic migrant labourer, who hailed from a village in Barwani district, had died while escaping from an inter-state check-post on the Maharashtra-MP border in his native district.
- April 21: A migrant labourer identified as the native of Shrawasti district of Eastern UP, who was returning to home on foot, died while crossing the MP-Maharashtra border.
- April 18: A 12-year-old tribal girl, who was working as a labourer in the border areas of Mulugu district, set out on a long walk back home to Bijapur in Chhattisgarh, but died of exhaustion just 10km from her home.
- April 18: A 48-year-old migrant worker from Kurnool district died of cardiac arrest in Atchampeta Mandal.
- April 2: Stopped from going home amid lockdown, a migrant worker dies in a relief camp. The labourer was taken to a makeshift relief camp on Haridwar-Delhi highway (in Haridwar district) after he was stopped from marching on foot towards his home town in Uttar Pradesh near Roorkee.
- April 1: After walking for about 500km with his friends, a 23-year-old man died at a shelter home in Telangana
- March 29: Waiting for a ride back home, five migrants hailing from UP were killed while 8 others were critically injured after being hit by a truck on KMP (Kundli Manesar Palwal Expressway) in Haryana.
- March 28: A 39-year-old man, employed at a restaurant in Delhi as a home delivery boy, died in Agra while he on his way to the Morena district of Madhya Pradesh.
- March 28: Four migrants were run over by a truck at Virar on the Mumbai-Gujarat highway. Reports said the migrant labourers were originally from Rajasthan.
- March 28: A 26-year-old migrant worker was killed in the Pakwarha area of Moradabad while walking from Sonipat, Haryana to his village in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.
- March 28: Seven including two minors died and six others were injured in a road accident, after the open truck they were travelling in, was hit at the rear by a lorry. The deceased is believed to be going back to their native place in Karnataka from Suryapet, in Telangana
- March 27: Eight persons belonging to a group of migrant labourers returning to their homes in Raichur district in neighbouring Karnataka from Telangana were killed in a road accident. Those dead included an 18-month-old baby, a boy and a nine-year-old girl.
- March 24: Four people died, including a one-year-old child, in a forest fire at Rasingapuram in Theni district. They were part of a group of 10 estate workers who were returning from Pethotty in Kerala’s Idukki district.
These are just some of the reported incidents, there are several accidents resulting in deaths of and injuries to migrant workers which have gone unreported.
