Many workers died while attempting to return home
Coronavirus may have claimed 2,414 deaths so far, but 418 people have died in accidents or committed suicide with causes directly linked to the pandemic. Majority of them are migrant workers attempting to return home, or those who committed suicide due to loss of jobs or in fear of infection of coronavirus.
Of the 418 deaths, 83 deaths occurred due to suicides for reasons such as fear of infection, alcohol withdrawal symptoms and due to loss of job.
The number may be much higher as many cases in remote areas went unreported. A migrant worker died on board a Pune-Prayagraj Shramik Special train on Monday. The deceased identified as Akhilesh Kumar was returning to his hometown in Ghonda, Uttar Pradesh.
In another incident, four migrants, including a woman and her daughter, have died in separate accidents in Haryana and UP when they were returning to their hometown on Monday. In another tragedy, six migrants have been killed in road accident in Ramgrah and Chatra in Jharkhand on Monday.
Tens of thousands of migrant workers, who turned jobless by the lockdown since late March, have been walking, cycling or hitching rides, desperate to reach home despite a ban on public transport or interstate movement. Many migrants continue to do so despite special trains arranged for them, finding the tickets too expensive and the paperwork too arduous.
In another incident, a migrant worker from Bihar was killed and another injured after being hit by a speeding car in Haryana. A fourth migrant, cycling home, was killed on Monday night in Rae Bareli.
Two more migrants were killed on Monday on their way home to Uttar Pradesh from Telangana after a truck they had taken a ride in for a break from walking overturned in Gorakhpur district. In another tragedy, six workers on their way to UP were killed in Madhya Pradesh when a truck overturned.
On May 9, 11 migrant workers died and 14 others injured in separate incidents like fatigue due to walking a long distance and a road accident in four districts in Madhya Pradesh. The deaths were reported from Narsinghpur, Barwani, Sagar and Shajapur districts.
Almost all the deceased were travelling to Uttar Pradesh either from Maharashtra, Hyderabad or Karnataka amid the lockdown.
Before that, 16 migrants walking along railway tracks to avoid the highway were run over by a goods train in Aurangabad. Exhausted, they had fallen asleep on the tracks thinking no trains were running. The migrant workers, rendered jobless due to the coronavirus lockdown, were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape police attention.
The plight of migrant workers, who have been walking thousands of kilometres to reach their hometowns amid the coronavirus lockdown, is heart-wrenching.
The Pioneer has talked to several migrants who said if death were the only option, they would rather die in their homes.
According to a research report prepared DataMeet Trust, as many as 418 people died till May 11 in such cases. According to this compilation, 18 people died on March 25 across India. This figure reached to 186 on April 8. The number of people died, has touched 281 on April 22 while on May 1, 340 people reported to died.
On May 1, four migrants died in road accidents in Bhagalpur. On April 16, two people committed suicide due to harassment of coronavirus outbreak in Dehradun. On April 13, three people committed suicide due to lockdown.
According to their compilation, on March 28, a few days after the lockdown, eight migrants returning home were killed in a road accident in Karnataka’s Raichur. On March, 17 migrant labourers and their family members - including five children - have lost their lives in the course of their desperate efforts to return home.
