Agencies
Guna/Muzaffarnagar/Lucknow
Fourteen migrant labourers were killed and nearly 60 injured in two road accidents while they were on the way to their homes in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, police said on Thursday.
In an early morning accident in Guna, around 180 km from Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, eight Uttar Pradesh-bound migrant workers were killed and nearly 55 injured when the truck they were travelling in collided with a bus, the MP police said.
The second accident took place in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar around 10.30 pm on Wednesday when six migrant workers walking to their homes in Bihar from Punjab were killed and four seriously injured after being hit by a roadways bus on the Delhi-Saharanpur Highway, officials said.
The Guna accident took place around 3 am Thursday when the truck carrying nearly 65 migrant labourers from Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh collided with a bus, which only had a driver, coming from the wrong side on the Guna bypass road, SP Tarun Nayak said.
The injured were undergoing treatment at the Guna district hospital, he said, adding that none of them sustained any serious injury. Prima facie, it seems the carelessness of the bus driver caused the accident, Nayak said, adding a case was registered against the bus driver and further investigation is underway. The deceased were residents of Unnao and Raebareli districts of UP, according to police, who also said the truck carrying the migrant labourers was going to Unnao.
Guna Collector S Vishwanathan said the district administration is making arrangements to send the injured labourers home safely after they recover.
MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan condoled the death of the migrant labourers and said he has directed officials concerned to ensure proper treatment of the injured persons.
In Lucknow, UP CM Yogi Adityanath announced an ex gratia payment of Rs. 2 lakh each to the next of the kin of the deceased and Rs. 50,000 each for the seriously hurt. Yogi directed officials to coordinate with MP government to ensure proper treatment of the injured, officials said.
He asked them to make arrangements for bringing the bodies of the deceased to their homes. Policemen involved in the rescue work were later quarantined in the wake of the COVID-19 scare, a police official said.
Meanwhile, six migrant workers, walking to their homes in Bihar from Punjab, were killed and four seriously injured when a roadways bus ran them over on the Delhi-Saharanpur Highway in UP’s Muzaffarnagar, officials said. The incident took place on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday between Ghalauli check-post and Rohana Toll Plaza, 20 km from Muzaffarnagar, SSP Abhishek Yadav said.
