With two migrants being killed and over three dozen others getting injured in separate road accidents, it seems the movement of migrant workers and their families by unauthorised vehicle continues unabated.
In a road mishap in Unnao, two migrants workers were killed and 10 others were injured on Monday afternoon when the axle of the pick-up they were travelling in broke down on Agra-Lucknow Expressway.
The injured were shifted to hospital.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief at the death of the two migrants and announced an assistance of Rs 2 lakh each for the dependants of the deceased and Rs 50,000 for those critically injured.
Meanwhile in Ayodhya, 20 migrants were injured when a pick-up carrying them home met with an accident in the wee hours of Monday.
Reports said that migrants from Mumbai were going to Siddharthnagar on a pick-up when the vehicle rammed into a truck at Aunaura crossing on National Highway-28, injuring all of them. They were taken to district hospital where the condition of two of them was stated to be critical.
Surprisingly, the government has already restricted carrying of migrants by unauthorised vehicles. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took immediate cognisance of the accident and directed the district magistrate and district police chief to rush to the spot and ensure proper medical care to those injured and alternate vehicle for the remaining journey of other migrants.
In another mishap in Kushinagar, a bus carrying migrants from Delhi to Bihar collided with another truck loaded with onion near a petrol pump on NH-28 in the early hours of Monday. A dozen passengers were injured in the mishap.
In another similar mishap in Kushinagar on Sunday night, seven migrants were injured.
In a separate mishap in Hamirpur, a Kaushambi depot bus ferrying 31 migrants from Noida to Mahoba met with an accident in Sadar Kotwali area. Ten labours, including women, were injured in the mishap.
In Muzaffarnagar, the police intercepted half-a-dozen container trucks at a check-post in the Miranpur area late Sunday evening and were shocked to see over 500 migrants workers hiding inside them. The migrant workers from Yamunanagar in Haryana were trying to reach their native places in Bihar and West Bengal. The container trucks were seized.
The migrants were shifted to shelter homes, police said, adding they would be sent to their home districts later.
The migrants said they paid Rs 2,500 each to the container owners for the journey, police said.
According to official sources, over 3,300 migrant workers in the district have been sent in buses to their homes so far.
Meanwhile, a suspected COVID-19 patient managed to escape from the isolation centre in Rae Bareli, creating panic among the local residents.
The police registered a case and launched a hunt for the COVID-19 suspect. Reports said that Ramkaran, a resident of Behtakala hamlet of Lalganj in Rae Bareli came back from Ludhiana in Punjab on Saturday evening. As he was running high fever, he was sent to Bakshi Memorial Public School quarantine centre. However, before his report for coronavirus test arrived, he escaped from the centre sometime on Sunday night.
Incharge of the centre, Anil Kumar Pandey, claimed that they were talking to Ramkaran and he was also attending the calls but disconnecting the phone saying that he was returning.
Meanwhile, SP, Balrampur, Dev Ranjan, said that they registered 37 cases in 13 police stations of the district in which they named 1,547 persons for violating quarantine norms.
Ranjan said that the accused were quarantined on suspicion of being infected with coronavirus but instead of remaining quarantined they were found to be roaming in public.
