An eight-month pregnant woman was forced to cover 100 km on foot without food to reach home after her husband was sacked by his employer. They had been walking for two days without food before locals came to their rescue.
Their long walk home to Bulandshahr started last week from Saharanpur, following the announcement of the nationwide 21-day lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country.
The exhausted couple was finally offered financial assistance and an ambulance to cover the remaining distancing after local residents Naveen Kumar and Ravindra spotted them in Meerut on March 28.Coronavirus News India LIVE Updates
The migrant worker and his wife, who hail from Amargarh village of Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, were turned out by their employer without a penny after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lockdown announcement. Not just that, defying the directive of the PM to not cut the salary of the workers, the employer refused to hand over the monthly salary to the husband, reported The Statesmen.
Penniless, they were forced to walk to their paternal village in Bulandshahr.
When they had halted at Sohrab Gate bus stand, possibly hoping to take public transport to cover the rest of the way, they were spotted by the Meerut locals. The locals who noticed them immediately reached out to the police, who came forward and helped them.
Ashutosh Kumar, Station House Officer, Nauchandi Police Station said the couple — Yasmeen and Vakil — used to stay in a one-room accommodation provided by the employer. The husband used to work at a factory in Saharanpur.
The announcement of the three-week lockdown has seen a mass exodus of migrant labourers and daily wage earners, most of whom have been walking home in the absence of any means to make money and pay for travel.
