Migrants across the country have been pleading for more trains to take them home but for a group of 800-odd returning workers on Sunday, getting a train did not end their misery.

After a daylong train ride — on tickets bought from touts at six times the official price — they had to begin another wait hundreds of miles from their homes because the administration had organised neither buses nor quarantine for them.

Just 16 of the 880 migrants on the 22-coach train that pulled into Saharanpur station on Sunday afternoon from Godhra in Gujarat were residents of Saharanpur district.

The remaining 864 were from Agra, Mathura, Bareilly, Kasganj and other places in Uttar Pradesh but were not allowed to get off at the stations nearest their home. They alleged that Government Railway Police and railway staff caned and beat them back into the train whenever anyone tried to get off anywhere before the last stop, Saharanpur.

“Railway police beat me when I got off at Agra station. I have travelled 1,100km from Godhra to Saharanpur and am now waiting for a bus to take me back 400km in the opposite direction,” Ram Kumar Yadav, a migrant labourer from Agra, said on Monday standing outside Saharanpur railway station, where he had spent the night.

A railway official in Lucknow explained that under the Centre’s instructions, no worker on a Shramik train can get off before the last stop, from where all the passengers are to be taken by bus to their home districts to be put in 14 days’ quarantine.

Local media quoted Saharanpur circle officer Mukesh Chandra Mishra as saying on Monday: “The 16 passengers from our district have been sent to a quarantine centre. Those from other districts will soon be sent to their home districts by buses to be put under quarantine.”

However, as the comments by the migrants showed, the administration had made no effort to arrange their night stay at Saharanpur or their bus journey home to be put under quarantine.

Most of them were still waiting to catch buses outside the railway station or at the Saharanpur bus station on Monday evening, with a lucky few having found a ride home. None of them seemed to have been told they needed to be put under quarantine or that the government was arranging their transport home.

State home department sources said over 600 Shramik trains had arrived in Uttar Pradesh so far and in most cases the passengers were put under quarantine.

Initially, they were put in facilities at the last stop but with the number of arrivals increasing, they were being bused to their home districts and quarantined near their villages.

The sources, however, could not explain why this was not done in Saharanpur. Media reports have said a similar lapse was witnessed in state capital Lucknow on May 5, when 1,200 migrants arrived on a train from Mumbai and most of them set off on foot for their home districts from the railway station.

Fleeced

Raj Kumar of Kasganj, a passenger on the Saharanpur train, described how the workers had been fleeced by touts for the ride — a racket being reported widely and blamed on the government’s opaque system of registering passengers and poor communication.

“The owner of the brick kiln where I worked in Godhra sacked and evicted me and the other labourers on March 25. We slept on roads and agricultural fields for 52 days till a group of five touts arranged a Rs 800 ticket for Rs 5,000,” he told reporters in Saharanpur on Monday.

His claim that the government was charging Rs 800 per ticket runs counter to the Centre’s claim that the railways and the state governments are shouldering the entire cost of the journeys.

Faced with claims by many migrants that they had to buy their tickets, government representatives have tried to pass the blame on non-BJP states, accusing them of not doing their bit. But Raj Kumar is from a BJP-ruled state.

“Railway staff didn’t let me get off in Mathura, from where Kasganj is only 65km. I don’t know how many days I have to wait here for a bus to go back 350km. Only two buses have come here since our arrival on Sunday afternoon,” Kumar told reporters at the Saharanpur bus station.

Influx continues

While chief minister Yogi Adityanath has banned migrants from travelling on foot or unauthorised buses since a truck collision killed 26 migrants at Auraliya on Saturday morning, police said the inflow of labourers into the state was unabated.

“We have instructions not to allow anyone to enter from other districts, but a large number of migrants are entering Saharanpur through lanes and alleyways of the villages instead of highways, where we have deployed police,” an officer said.

“More migrants are arriving than we can arrange trains or buses for.”

He said over 5,000 migrants were waiting at the border of Yamunanagar (Haryana) with Saharanpur since Sunday evening.

Sukhpal Sharma, resident of Bargaon in Saharanpur, confirmed that a large number of labourers from Bihar, who used to work in Haryana and Punjab, were passing through his village. “They prefer village routes to avoid the police, who beat them. We offer them food and water,” Sharma said.

Officials said buses had been arranged for 4,000 of the 12,000-odd migrants stranded in Tilakhni village who had agitated on the highway on Sunday morning alleging police beat them at their shelter home and told them there wouldn’t be any trains or buses for the next few days.

“We sent about 4,000 home by buses on Sunday and are trying to arrange more buses and trains,” Saharanpur district magistrate Akhilesh Kumar Singh said.