Coronavirus lockdown: 4 migrants, headed home, killed in accidents

Ambala, May 12: In separate road accidents, four migrants including a woman and her daughter, have been killed on their way to villages amid the coronavirus lockdown.

The woman and her daughter, six, were part of a group travelling between Maharashtra and Jaunpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh. They had travelled 1,300 km in an auto-rickshaw for three days, when they were hit by a truck just short of their destination, in Fatehpur, UP.

In another incident a migrant labourer was killed while another seriously injured when a car hit them on the Ambala-Jagadhri highway near Ambala Cantonment on Tuesday morning, police said.

A group of migrant labourers told the police that they were headed towards their native village in Bihar's Purnia district from Punjab's Ludhiana on foot when the incident occurred.

The driver of the car fled the spot along with the vehicle after the incident, the police said, adding that they have got inputs about the vehicle and the driver would be nabbed soon.

The deceased was identified as Ashok Kumar (25) while the injured labourer was admitted to the civil hospital at Ambala Cantonment, they said. One of the labourers, who was part of the group, said around a dozen of them had commenced the journey on foot from Ludhiana two days ago as they were not able to register themselves for boarding one of the special trains of the Indian Railways.

The railways is running "Shramik" trains from various places for migrant labourers who want to go back to their native states.

One of the labourers said they decided to go back to their village in Bihar as the owner of the factory where they worked removed them from their jobs and there was no arrangement for their accommodation or food.

After the post-mortem examination, the body of the deceased will be kept in the mortuary at the civil hospital, the police said, adding that his relatives were being informed.