On the night of Saturday, 16 May, a number of migrant workers who were headed on foot towards their homes spread across different parts of Uttar Pradesh were stopped at Ghazipur on the Delhi-UP border.
One of the migrants, Pinky, told news agency ANI, “We have come from Gurugram and we are going to Hardoi in UP. I don’t know how we’ll reach home as police are not allowing us to move forward.”
Another migrant told ANI that he was forced to leave with his family because he could no longer pay his landlord the rent. He said, “I have been walking from Swaroop Nagar and we have been stopped by police here. My landlord verbally abused me and asked us for rent as it was pending for two months. We have no money to get ration, so we felt it was better to leave.”
One of the workers was heard saying that the police demanded a pass from them, and were asking them to go back.
Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla had last week written a letter to the home secretaries of various states and Union Territories asking them to aid the migrant workers. He had requested the states to facilitate their movement by arranging buses and using the ‘Shramik’ special trains.
(With inputs from ANI)
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