Avreena Khatoon to Vinod Kumar: The 16 migrants on trains who’ll never make it home

Uncared for and unmourned, two of them even died anonymously with no takers for their bodies.

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PATNA/LUCKNOW/RANCHI: More than 3,800 Shramik special trains, started on May 1, have transported 50 lakh, migrant workers, to their homes.

Their lives torn apart by penury, hunger and uncertainty on account of the sudden lockdown, these exhausted yet relieved migrants have found comfort and safety in their native villages.

But at least 16 of them were not so lucky. Seven each from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and two from Jharkhand died even before they could be reunited with their families and village folk. Uncared for and unmourned, two of them even died anonymously with no takers for their bodies.

Avreena Khatoon

The visuals of her toddler son playing with the sheet of cloth covering her lifeless body at Muzaffarpur railway station in Bihar tugged at the heartstrings of the entire country.

The 35-year-old died on board the Shramik special train that arrived from Ahmadabad in Gujarat.

Divorced by her husband 18 months ago, she had gone to Ahmadabad, where her sister’s family stayed, and took up a job in a small scale unit to bring up her two children aged four years and 15 months.

Her brother-in-law Mohammed Wazir alleged that she died due to hunger and heat in the train, but Muzaffarpur district magistrate, as well as the Railways, claimed that the family had admitted that she had been ill for several days when she was travelling.

Lal Babu Kamat

Working as a security guard in Surat for a decade, the 50-year-old had lost his job recently after he suffered a paralytic stroke.

With the lockdown imposed soon after, his family was stranded in the city without any income.

Securing a berth on the Shramik Special train to Darbhanga in Bihar on May 23 finally gave them some hope. But the joy of being able to return home was cut short as Kamat died on the train near Munger.

His wife Krishna Devi and three daughters de-boarded at Bhagalpur with his body and went to Darbhanga by road. Krishna Devi alleged that Kamat was on regular medication but had to miss the medicines in the train because there was no water.

Saroj Kumar: Losing his job post-lockdown, he reached Sasaram in Bihar on a Shramik train and then boarded an inter-state train to Patna via Gaya to reach home in Vaishali district. His brother claimed that he had not eaten anything for last two days.

Md Irshad: The four-year-old cried out of hunger and thirst as the Shramik Special train his family was travelling on took 39 hours to reach Patna from Delhi. He died enroute to Muzaffarpur.

Uresh Khatoon: The 35-year-old housewife died on a Purnia-bound Shramik special train from Surat. She was returning home after a heart surgery.