Delhi migrant employee walks 200 km to reach home after nationwide lockdown, dies on the road

NEW DELHI, Mar 29, 2020, Hindustan Times. A 38-year-old man who had walked 200 km from the national capital to reach home died on the Delhi-Agra highway on Saturday morning. Ranveer Singh’s destination, his family in a remote village in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena district, was still 100 km away, Hindustan Times reported.

The two men, who were accompanying Ranveer Singh, told the police that Ranveer Singh complained of chest pain sometime before he collapsed a short distance.

The death is the first recorded fatality among the tens of thousands – some estimates put the numbers into six digits – of migrant workers walking back to their villages for food and shelter after losing work in metropolitan cities during the three-week lockdown put in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

Ranveer Singh had decided to walk home after the government suddenly imposed a national lockdown, ordering shops and offices to close. Eating joints were allowed to stay open provided they don’t serve but deliver the food to customers. But in the initial days of the lockdown, the police wouldn’t let them operate.

Agra district police chief Babloo Kumar said the restaurant in south Delhi’s Tughlakabad locality where Ranveer Singh worked had shut down.

Like the thousands of migrant workers in and around Delhi who have been struggling to go home, Ranveer Singh also decided to go home. Since the government had stopped public transport services – buses and trains – his only option appeared to be to travel the 300 km by foot.

“Ranveer was accompanied by two others from Delhi and was walking towards his village in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. On reaching Agra on Saturday morning, he complained of chest pain. So all three stopped on the outskirts of Agra but Ranveer collapsed,” the senior police officer said.