One passenger was arrested from Hojai market after he disappeared from the train (File)
61 people have been arrested and two cases filed separately by the Railways and Assam Police after migrant workers, who were returning on board a Shramik special train from Mumbai, pulled the emergency chain to jump off the train so that they can avoid the quarantine period.
The train was travelling from Mumbai to Dibrugarh when the migrant workers decided to pull the chain of the Lokmanya Tilak Shramik train near Hojai railway station in Lower Assam on Tuesday midnight.
56 of those passengers who got down at Hojai were arrested by the Railway Protection Force the same night the incident happened, while the rest were arrested by the Assam Police in coordination with the Government Railway Police Force (GRPF) on Wednesday morning.
Out of these passengers, one was arrested from Hojai market after he disappeared from the train.
Out of the 56 passengers, 31 are from Murajhar, 16 from Lanka, 2 from Jamunamukh, 2 from Hojai, and 4 from Doboka, police sources added.
The incident created panic at the Hojai station as these workers came from Mumbai, the worst-affected city by COVID-19. Mumbai has over 40,000 coronavirus cases, and lakhs of migrants have left the city to return to their home states.
Assam has recently been witnessing a spike in coronavirus cases. As many as 111 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in Assam on Wednesday, taking the total number of cases in the state to 1,672. There are 1,328 active cases in the state. While 337 people have recovered, four died and three migrated out of the state.