Two people were found dead on a Shramik Express train that came from Mumbai to Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi on Wednesday.

The train was running from Mumbai's Lokmanya Tilak terminus to the Manduadih village in the Varanasi district. The bodies were found by railway staff when other passengers had got off the train and it was shifted to the yard for cleaning and sanitising. The train had arrived at the Manduadih station at 8.21 am.

The cause of death is yet to be ascertained.

While authorities claimed that one of the deceased was a resident of Jaunpur and was travelling with his family. He was differently-abled and had been ill for some time.

His family said that he ate food last night and went to sleep. When he did not wake up in the morning, they called authorities and he was found dead.

The other person has not yet been identified.

The Government Railway Police has taken custody of the bodies and sent them for an autopsy.

The coronavirus-triggered lockdown has had a devastating impact on the economy as well as on the livelihoods of lakhs of migrant workers.

With no money, food or water for days, many are paying the cost of the lockdown with their lives.

The plight of migrant workers who were walking on foot from several urban centres to their villages hundreds of kilometres away had grabbed headlines for almost two months.

There have been incidents of many of them being killed in road accidents. A number of migrant labourers were even killed by a speeding train after they fell asleep on the tracks.

On May 1, the Indian Railways started the migrant special trains to facilitate the movement of such workers back to their home states.