Despite Most Indians Being Locked Down in their Homes, Road Accidents Continue to Claim Migrants’ Lives

Lucknow: Packets of biscuits, pooris and sabzi in a polythene bag and scattered slippers. Their belongings tell of their tale, an arduous one, that did not end how it should have. Six migrant labourers who were walking on the Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur highway met their end late on Wednesday night when a speeding bus ran over them near Muzaffarnagar.

The labourers from Gopalganj district in Bihar had been working in a factory in Maharashtra.

"The accident took place between Ghalauli check-post and Rohana toll plaza on Saharanpur- Muzaffarnagar highway at around 12.00 am. The accused driver has been arrested and he may have been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident. All the workers were daily wage labourers and were going on foot to their homes in Bihar from Haryana," Abhishek Yadav, Muzaffarnagar Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), told NewsClick.

The deceased were identified as Harek Singh (52), his son Vikas (22), Guddu (18), Vasudev (22), Harsih Shahani (42) and Virendra (28). The injured – Sushil, Nathu Saini, Pawan Saini, Pramod and Ramji Rai – were rushed to the district hospital and were referred to a hospital in Meerut later. The group of labourers were going to their native place in Gopalganj.

The second such incident took place in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, where three migrant labourers and an infant girl were killed while 46 others reportedly suffered injuries. A truck carrying a group of 54 migrant labourers and their families from Ahmedabad in Gujarat to Balrampur in Uttar Pradesh rammed into a stationary truck near Lalpur police post on the Kanpur-Jhansi highway, killing three people and injuring 46 others.

A migrant labourer identified as Mohan (44) was returning to his house in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur from Chhattisgarh on a bicycle. He was reportedly killed after being hit by a truck, the police said on Wednesday. He had been working at a jaggery factory in Chhattisgarh's Raipur.

Mohan was among thousands of migrants desperately trying to return to their hometowns and villages after they were left without jobs, shelter or money due to the lockdown imposed in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a separate incident on Thursday at around 3 a.m., eight migrant labourers reportedly died and close to 50 others were severely injured after the truck they were travelling in collided with a bus in Guna, Madhya Pradesh.

The injured persons are undergoing treatment at the district hospital. Those who died in the incident were moving from Maharashtra to their homes in Uttar Pradesh.

The incidents came after 16 migrant workers died near Aurangabad in Maharashtra after a goods train ran over them after they fell asleep on the tracks. The incident, which took place at 5.15 a.m. on May 8, woke the nation up to the perils that migrants workers face while attempting to get back home during the nationwide lockdown.

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the first phase of the lockdown on March 24, 2020, without adequate measures to help migrant workers and survival of daily-wagers, there has been a mass exodus from various cities across the country to the villages, as workers try to make their way to their families. Road accidents involving migrants have been on a rise as the workers have resorted to desperate means to reach home.

According to data compiled by Save Life Foundation, an organisation which has been working to improve road safety across India, one-third of the accidents during the lockdown have happened on roads.

A member of the organisation told NewsClick: “We can imagine how unsafe our roads are given the increase in the number of road-crash fatalities despite the majority of Indians still inside their homes owing to the suspension of public transport amid the lockdown."

According to data compiled by NGO, first two phases (March 24 to May 3) of the lockdown recorded 600 road accidents. The highest number of accidents took place in Punjab (42), following by Kerala (26) and Delhi (18). The report said that most of them were daily wagers and desperate to reach their homes after losing their source of livelihood.