Nagraj Kalindi, 23, a resident of Khira Bera village of Bokaro district in Jharkhand, lost three members of his family in a road accident. On May 16, at least 25 migrant labourers, who were returning home from Rajasthan, died in a freak road accident in Auraiya, Uttar Pradesh. However, the real tragedy unfolded after the accident.

Twelve labourers from Jharkhand have died in the accident and some are seriously injured. Those who are battling for their lives in a hospital are alleging that they are not getting proper treatment. Besides, some of the bodies were dispatched from Auraiya to Jharkhand in a van. Those injured in the accident were made to sit in the same van. This has caused a good amount of grief and worry to the kin of the injured and the deceased.

Nagraj said: “Three people from my family have died in the incident. Two are seriously injured. My nephew called and informed that the truck he was sent in also had five bodies of people from the village. These bodies were kept on the back of the truck wrapped up in black plastic sheets, and at the other end, the injured are sleeping.”

He added: “When I learned that the bodies of our nephew and neighbors were coming on a truck, I thought to myself that because they were labourers, their bodies had been sent by truck. My nephew did not even get drinking water in the hospital. I called him and told him to somehow reach the village and here we’d arrange for his proper treatment.”

The body of one of his nephews, Ranjan Kalindi, 21, arrived in the same truck with another nephew Vikas sitting by it who has reported on the phone the entire incident to Nagaraj before leaving from Auraiya and has also sent some pictures of the vehicle. 

While the gruesome death of the homebound labourers on the road has ruined their families, the discrimination against the labourers has deeply hurt their families.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, while tagging Bokaro DC and Jharkhand police on a tweet, wrote: “This situation is inhuman and grossly insensitive. Ensure proper treatment of the injured as soon as they enter Jharkhand. Also inform after arranging to send the mortal remains of the deceased to their homes with full respect.”

Hemant Soren has appealed to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to send over the bodies to Jharkhand with dignity. 

Being delivered home through DCM, these are the bodies of the same labourers, who were anxious to reach their villages and so had set out walking hundreds of kilometres despite the lockdown. They did not know that the truck on which the police had put them on to reach home safely on May 16 would take their lives.

In the back of the DCM carrying the labourers’ bodies and some of the injured labourers from Auraiya to Jharkhand, the injured sat huddled a couple of metres away from the corpses. The photos clearly show the bodies on one side and some labourers sleeping on the other side. 

When a local journalist from Auraiya spoke to district magistrate Abhishek Singh in this context, he said: “The bodies belonging to Jharkhand were more, so four DCM were booked and four bodies were sent in each of them. There were also eight or nine injured labourers and so it was told to seat them in front of the two DCMs. It has now been reported that they are all sitting behind. We have spoken to the RTOs in Allahabad to seat the injured separately.”

The injured labourers sitting in the DCM could not talk to the family since the morning of May 17. It cannot be said with certainty how and in what condition they would reach Jharkhand. 

Gaon Connection tried calling up several responsible officers including Auraiya district magistrate throughout a day but no one had picked up the phone.

In Uttar Pradesh, 26 labourers were killed in a truck and trolley collision in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh on May 16 at around 3.30 pm. More than 40 labourers got injured in the incident. All these labourers came from Rajasthan and were going to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.

“What can I say, my brother was to wed this year,” saying this the younger brother of the deceased Gobardhan Kalindi, 21, Shalbo Kalindi, 19, fell silent. 

Gobardhan was the eldest of his six brothers. He was a labourer in a marble factory in Jaipur. Shalbo Kalindi spoke a little later: “My older brother had been working from a very young age. Three bodies — two nephews and a cousin — will be cremated together. The entire village has not fired any hearth for two days.”

Shalbo said: “Some more people in the village are stranded in Rajasthan. All are shocked since the Auraiya incident. All are repeatedly calling and telling us to provide for their return. The place where my brother had worked had closed down, there was a problem of food and so he was coming home. Little did he know that he would not be able to reach home.” 

More than 50 labourers have died in road accidents (between May 14 and 16) in different parts of the country. More than 500 labourers have lost their lives in 51 days of countrywide lockdown before reaching home, with the highest number of labourers going on foot.

When Auraiya incident was reported in the morning of May 16, Sudama Yadav of Chiru village in Palamu district of Jharkhand began calling up the officers of Auraiya district to find out about his son’s safety. When he could not learn anything about his son by noon, he had to leave for Auraiya, 700 kms away from Palamu, looking for his son. On May 17, he came to know that his twenty-one-year-old son, Nitish, had also died in the incident. With no identity card, his body was kept among the unidentified casualities.

“After arriving, I had the son’s post mortem done.  At about 7 PM, I am taking his remains in an ambulance to the village. With great hopes, I had come with a borrowed vehicle this far, I did not know that he would go back to the village in such a state. When I came here, I was confident that he would be among the unknown people that have been injured, but instead saw him lying among the unidentified dead,” Sudama Yadav’s words conveyed the suffering of losing the son.