Migrants desperate to return home to UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal resorted to violence in different parts of India. Migrants from Surat clashed with police and torched vehicles. There was growing resentment in Ahmedabad, too, as migrants ran from pillar to post on learning they had to physically register themselves for the journey home and had to be dispersed by police when too many gathered at the collectorate even as the state said at least 21,500 had already been sent home.
The failure to anticipate their desperation, and to communicate effectively, was apparent. Many didn’t seem to know they had to register. A lot of people had their forms rejected for minor errors. And others found they had to fill out a new, entirely different form.
In Ahmedabad, Mohammed Shakil Alalm, a construction worker from Katihar, Bihar, said he was told by his fellow workers that migrants would be registered at the collectorate and taken to their destinations from Sabarmati railway station. "There was no such thing and I was shooed away. I do not have a job, nor money, so I do not know where to go for help," Alam said.
Angered over the delay in sending them home, hundreds of migrant workers turned violent in Bengaluru following rumours that the temporary camp near Bangalore International Exhibition Centre, where they had gathered, was nothing but a quarantine facility. Four police personnel were attacked and a few police vehicles were damaged. Police had to resort to a lathicharge to rein in the restless workers who threw stones at the cops.
In Mumbai, Mohammad Hanif, a migrant from UP’s Balrampur who had waited at Kajupada police station in Saki Naka for five hours, said, “There was such a crowd that police hit us on our legs with sticks. They told us to leave and said they would not accept our forms today. This whole thing is a farce.” He had tried to leave once before, on a truck, but had been sent back from Powai.
In Pune, police resorted to a “mild lathicharge” after a crowd of 500-600 migrants gathered at Warje police station to fill forms and blocked the road.
Large groups of migrants that included women too hit the roads in Vareli, a textile manufacturing cluster adjoining Surat, and resorted to heavy stone pelting at the police and vandalizing vehicles. Cops lobbed at least 40 tear gas shells and resorted to lathicharge as the mob was unrelenting. Teams of policemen were seen chasing the migrants into interior lanes and caning people.
Later, around 200 people were arrested for rioting. The migrants, many of whom were already vexed after being sent back from Gujarat borders, started gathering on the roads outside the labour colonies. Police rushed there and asked them to return homes. However, migrants pressed with their demand to return to their natives and the situation soon turned tense.
Refusing to go back, the workers resorted to stone pelting on police team. "At least 3,000 workers were involved in the rioting and few of them even hurled acid bottles on cops," said Rajkumar Pandian, inspector general of police, Surat range. Some of them damaged and torched a few motorcycles, an autorickshaw as well as a private car of a policeman. "We are trying to identify people involved in instigating the workers," Pandian added.
Vareli is an industrial cluster having textile and dyeing and printing units, which employ close to 2,00,000 migrants, majority from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar.
Later in the noon, a huge crowd of migrants even gathered at Palanpur Patiya also in the city limit area. However, there was no violence and went back to their homes after being convinced by police.
After the lockdown was imposed on March 23, migrants in Surat have resorted to angry protests several times. On March 29, they had pelted stones at police in Pandesara area with a demand to return to their natives. Later on April 10, a crowd of migrants blocked the national highway by burning logs of wood.
Sources in police informed that the migrants were enraged after thousands, who had started for their natives in private buses and cargo vehicles with valid permissions, were forced to return to Surat from state borders as far as 500 km.
In Valsad district too, hundreds of labourers blocked the roads blocked the highway traffic near Vapi GIDC. But police cleared the road and the workers relented. Even in Kerala migrants came out on streets demanding that they be sent back to home and protested against landlords demanding rents.
