UP Cops Stop 94 Migrant Workers, Families On 1,000-km Truck Journey To Bihar

Amid an extended national lockdown over the coronavirus outbreak, a heart-breaking story has emerged of 94 migrant labourers and their families attempting a desperate 1,000-kilometre journey home from Ballabhgarh in Haryana to their villages in Bihar.

Broke, homeless and, with buses and trains halted, the men, women and children, like lakhs of other migrants, had no option but to embark on the punishing journey.

Some of those lakhs successfully defied the odds and made it home. This particular group failed; on Sunday afternoon, they were intercepted at the Uttar Pradesh-Jharkhand border by a team of UP cops.

The migrants were found packed into the back of a truck with hardly any space to move, let alone breathe, at a time when more privileged sections of the society have been assiduously practicing social distancing to keep the COVID-19 virus at bay.

Worse still, they had been travelling for nearly 48 gruelling hours since departing Haryana on April 17, with only some biscuits and a little puffed rice for food.

"We worked at a private cement factory. After the first lockdown, the company gave us rations for a few days and then stopped. Government and NGO help was sporadic. We called local administration and Bihar government helplines. Someone said "we will ensure rations are sent". Someone said "we will make arrangements". Nothing happened," Nand Kishore Rajak, one of the men in the truck, said.

Stranded by the lockdown, migrants workers have tried walking hundreds of kilometres home (File)

Mr Rajak had some connections to political leaders in Bihar who, in turn, were connected to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav.

Help was still not incoming.

"When the second lockdown was announced, we were left with no money. We found a truck and decided to make the journey back. We would have died of hunger anyway... so we decided to try. Nobody listens to us," another worker in the truck said.

"When elections come, everyone will say "look, we did this, we did that". But nobody listens to us," he added.

For now the 94 migrants and their families are stuck in no-man's land. They have nothing to return to in Haryana and cannot go home to Bihar. The UP cops have placed them in a quarantine centre in Sonbhadra district and filed a case against the owner of the truck, the driver and an assistant.

"The migrants are from Vaishali and Munger districts. This truck had gone from Jharkhand to Haryana. When lockdown was extended, the truck driver agreed to ferry the migrants back to Bihar. He covered the truck with sheets to avoid detection," Ashish Shrivastava, the Sonbhadra police chief, said.

The plight of migrant workers like Nand Kishore Rajak has made headlines around the country since the lockdown was initiated last month.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government set out an Rs 1.75 lakh crore package to help daily wagers, migrants and the poorer sections survive the lockdown and the COVID-19 outbreak.

But with horrific scenes on an almost daily basis - earlier this week migrant workers from UP's Aligarh district were filmed eating discarded rotting bananas on the banks of Delhi's Yamuna river - a humanitarian crisis is unfolding alongside the medical one.

Hungry migrant workers scavenge for slightly edible bananas at Delhi cremation ground

The lockdown has been extended to May 3 but the government has also re-opened some rural industries, construction in rural areas and MNERGA works to provide employment in rural areas.

All of these, however, are only in non-containment zones, which do not include metro cities and major urban centres, where thousands of migrant workers are struggling.