Coronavirus lockdown: Down Mumbai-Agra highway, migrant workers walk again, in hundreds

Read | Longer lockdown brings 2,000 angry workers out on the street in Mumbai

The 60-year-old was among the hundreds who could be seen on the Mumbai-Agra Highway on Thursday, walking in groups, headed for homes in North India. The sun beat down, at other times police chased them away, but throughout a 36-km stretch from Mumbai till Bhiwandi, they kept reassembling and walking.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had on Tuesday made an appeal to migrant workers to stay on.

The HIV patient worked at a construction site in Mumbai with his son, who was walking with him. Doctors have advised the 60-year-old to eat well, which hadn’t been possible since the lockdown began on March 24, his son said. “I kept my father inside the house to prevent him from getting infected. But once the lockdown got extended, I told him we cannot stay anymore. I am ready to carry him on my shoulders.”

Nandlal Nishad, 38, returning to Allahabad, 1,400 km away, said he had come to Mumbai two decades ago. “Initially, after the lockdown, I could afford only one meal a day. Now I was struggling for even that,” he said, sitting by the highway and eating some biscuits handed over by sympathetic villagers in Shahapur.

A man stopped by police and taken to an ashram near the highway, along with 30 others, said he set off from Mumbai at 3 am Thursday and had reached Bhiwandi when caught. He paints houses for a living.

Also at the ashram were Ranjana Pawar, 35, and nine members of her family. They left from Mira Road in Mumbai at 8 pm on Wednesday, she said, forced out by the behaviour of their neighbours. Headed for Washim district, 570 km away, they were stopped by police at a Padgha naka, 55 km from Mira Road. Pawar said their neighbours in Dechkul chawl in Kashimira area had forbidden them from using the common toilet and tap, forcing them to pay and use a public washroom. “Our neighbours told us we were infected.”

A group of eight who hoped to cycle all the way to Banda in Uttar Pradesh, 1,200 km away, were sent back from Kasara Ghat, 80 km from where they had set off in Kalyan.

Rohit Kumar said they worked at a bakery in Mumbai. “With the bakery shut, our employer stopped paying us,” he said. Rajkumar said police had caned them and told them to return to Kalyan.

They would just look for an opening and try again, the group said.

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