Queued up from 3am to join family before Eid

Nagpur: With the sun beating down hard and having had nothing to eat, Mohd Sadiq, 13, was sapped by noon. His zeal to reach home in Bihar, though kept him going despite being queued up at Pachpaoli police station since 3am on Thursday. Around 102 students from different madrassas in north Nagpur boarded a Bihar-bound train in the evening.
The desperation to reunite with their families before Eid next week was writ large on their faces. Many did not care to wear footwear, and almost all of them were bereft of water bottles on a day which was one of the hottest in the season.
The eagerness to reach home was at fever pitch among the likes of Sadiq, his friends Mohd Muzammil and Mohd Murshid Raza — all aged between 13 and 15 years. They had turned up at the police station in the wee hours of the day just to ensure that their exit from the city was unhindered.
“We will reach home just before Eid. I initially thought we might miss being with our families this time,” said Sadiq. “A day earlier, we had come to the police station but there was some problem for which we had to return. Today, we did not want to take any chances and boarded whatever was available to go home,” he added.
Around 144 students from different madrassas in city were sent back to their native state of Bihar — most of them belonging to Kishanganj — with the initiatives of city police, NGOs and some social workers in the last couple of days. It’s learnt that the students, all from economically weak families of Bihar, were supposed to return home before the onset of Ramzan, but their tickets were for the following day of janata curfew, when the lockdown had already commenced.
It was additional commissioner of police Nilesh Bharne, who started coordinating with police station in-charges and NGOs to send these children back.
A couple of days ago, 42 students of madrassas from Kamptee and Satranjipura had left in a bus offered for the cause by its owner Mohd Saad, with the diesel being sponsored by Altaf Ahmed.
Mushtak Pathan, district child protection officer, along with NGO workers, too reached Pachpaoli police station, from where the students were supposed to take a bus to the railway station. “We distributed food packets, footwear and some masks for the children and also inquired about their health,” he said.