Heart-rending: Boy sleeps on suitcase wheeled by mother; 800-km journey lies ahead
NEW DELHI/AGRA: A boy, dead tired from a walk his little body can hardly take, sleeps on a suitcase being wheeled by his mother. The weight has almost doubled for the woman, who drags the suitcase and her sleeping son both but doesn’t slow down as she keeps pace with the small group walking on the highway in Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
When asked about the destination, the mother replied ‘Jhansi’.
The group had apparently started their long journey on foot from Punjab and was heading to Jhansi — a distance of 800 km.
These visuals are the latest to join the wrenching montage of migrant families forced to travel home, left without jobs, homes or any money since the country went into lockdown in late-march to slow the spread of Coronavirus.
Many have lost their lives before reaching home, either in road accidents or from hunger, exhaustion or illness. Buses or trains arranged recently are no help. Many find the train tickets too costly or paperwork laborious.
A group of migrant workers started off from Indore after the brick factory they worked in shutdown. Taking their families, they set off on cycles.
One man was pulling his two young children, sleeping on the cycle and somehow balanced on a bed made from blankets. A 500-km journey lay ahead.
Meanwhile, 14 migrant labourers were killed and nearly 60 injured in two road accidents on Thursday while they were on the way to their homes in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, police said.
In an early morning accident in Guna, around 180 km from Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, eight Uttar Pradesh-bound migrant workers were killed and nearly 55 injured when the truck they were travelling in collided with a bus, the MP police said.
The second accident took place in UP’S Muzaffarnagar when six migrant workers walking to their homes in Bihar from Punjab were killed and four seriously injured after being hit by a roadways bus on the Delhi-saharanpur Highway, officials said.
The Guna accident took place around 3 am when the truck carrying nearly 65 migrant labourers from Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh collided with a bus, which only had a driver, coming from the wrong side on the Guna bypass road, Superintendent of Police Tarun Nayak said.
The injured were undergoing treatment at the Guna district hospital, he said, adding that none of them sustained any serious injury.
Prima facie, it seems the carelessness of the bus driver caused the accident, Nayak said.
The deceased were residents of Unnao and Rae Bareli, according to police, who also said the truck carrying the migrant labourers was going to Unnao.