No job and little food, 18 set out for home in Bihar on 10 bicycles

GREATER NOIDA: “We will die here, let us go home,” Jahangir got off his cycle and pleaded before the police team that had stopped him and a few other migrant workers at Badalpur.
With no income for the past two months and savings fast drying up, Jahangir and other migrant workers from his village in Bihar had stayed put in Delhi for the first two phases of the lockdown. The uncertainty kept growing for them, and so did their longing for home.
Unaware that buses were being arranged to send migrant workers home, Jahangir and the others could not have set out on foot as there were a few elderly people in their group. Staying in Delhi wasn’t an option either — their landlord had started prodding them for rent and at times threatened to evict them too.
Jahangir counted — the group of 18, which included a woman, had 10 cycles in total. On Friday morning, the 18 workers from various districts of UP and Bihar started cycling for home — taking turns to pedal or sit on the carrier or even walk if the incline was too steep.
Call it fortune or otherwise, their journey was shortlived. They had just reached Badalpur around 1pm when the cops at the border stopped them. Their cycles were seized and they were arrested.
Jahangir and the others were sent to a shelter home. “Just when we thought we had lost all our chances to go home, an official came with a piece of paper and asked for our addresses,” said Mohammad Afroz, from Purnia in Bihar
By Friday evening, the Noida administration had sent 11 from the group to their homes in buses. The rest of them will have to stay at the shelter home until arrangements are made for them too.
An FIR was, however, registered against the group of workers under IPC Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) and Section 51 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005. “They were roaming around without masks and were keen on continuing their journey home. They were told it is illegal to move around like that and the administration had made arrangements to send them back to their villages,” said Patnish Kumar, the SHO of Badalpur police station.