Image Courtesy:indianexpress.com
Three months into the lockdown, migrant workers who faced the worst brunt of the lockdown exercise, continue to lose their lives as they try to get back home to their native villages. Walking, cycling and partly hitchhiking thousands of kilometers to their destinations, many have lost their lives to exhaustion, hunger, accidents and rough weather and terrain.
In another heart-wrenching incident, a total of 28 migrant workers were injured in separate accidents on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, The Indian Express reported. It was reported that the police on Monday said that in the incidents which took place in Kannauj and Kanpur, a bus carrying migrant workers turned turtle after ramming into a road divider, critically injuring five people.
Kannauj
IE reported the Station House Officer of the Tirwa Police Station, Indrapal Saroj as saying that the bus was coming from Delhi, ferrying 30 migrants to Nalanda, Bihar. The bus reportedly turned turtle in Kannauj after it hit a road divider in Mathia Village on Monday, June 15 at 7:30 AM, injuring ten people. Two people, including the bus driver, Roshan Lal, suffered serious injuries and were instructed to be taken to Kanpur while the other injured were treated at a hospital in Kannauj itself. Those unhurt were taken to their destination in Nalanda in another vehicle.
Kanpur
Bilhor Police Station House Officer, Santosh Awasthi said that a bus from Delhi which was ferrying 62 migrants to Muzaffarpur in Bihar, overturned after it hit a road divider on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday, injuring 18 persons, three of whom were critically injured and recuperating at a hospital in Kanpur, IE reported. Those who were unhurt were sent to Muzaffarpur in another vehicle.
Prior to this, in another accident, as many as eight workers from West Bengal sustained minor injuries after a bus carrying them home from Kerala to Murshidabad was hit by a speeding truck at Dandika in Odisha on May 31, 2020, The New Indian Express reported. The police rushed to the spot and took the injured passengers to the Basta Community Health Centre where they were treated and discharged to be sent home.
Two days before that on May 29, seven out of 28 migrant workers going home to West Bengal were critically injured after their bus fell into a 16 feet deep gorge near Nuagaon-Mangalpur village within Balasore Industrial police limits, TNIE reported.
On May 19, 2020 four persons, including three migrants from Jharkhand died on the spot and 22 others were injured when an MSRTC bus carrying them rammed into a stationary tipper parked by the roadside near Kolvan village in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, The Times of India reported. The bus was transporting 30 migrants to Nagpur from where they were to catch a Shramik Special train back home to Jharkhand.
These are just some of the instances out of the hundreds of accidents that have taken place during the months of the lockdown. A survey conducted by Save Life Foundation has reported that as many as 198 migrant workers have been killed in road accidents during the lockdown. However, a public database maintained by Thejesh G.N, an independent technologist, developer, hacker, maker, traveller, blogger and an open data/internet enthusiast from Bangalore; along with Aman (Assistant Professor of Legal Practice at Jindal Global School of Law), Kanika Sharma (PhD student at Emory University), Krushna (PhD student at Syracuse University) reports that 209 migrants have lost their lives during walking and in migration.
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