With no money for them to continue living here amid the lockdown, Pappu Khan from Bhiwandi was compelled to borrow hand loan from his contacts to meet ends. Now, he desperately wants to go back to his hometown in Uttar Pradesh as the hand loans borrowed during the lockdown period has reached the tune of nearly Rs 80,000.
Khan, who is a scrap dealer in Bhiwandi, was seen sitting on a footpath at Kurla with his wife, brother and sister-in-law. Both the brothers have three children each, all below the age of 10 years.
They sat in the scorching heat for hours without food and water at Kurla, after they were shunted by the local police, from Lokmaniya Tilak Terminus (LTT).
"We came to Kurla in a mini tempo on early Saturday morning from Bhiwandi, after paying nearly Rs 2,000 for the journey. We queued up in the serpentine line on the platform, however, the police did not allow us to board the train to UP and shooed all of us away," Khan, told FPJ.
"After being shunted, we decided to wait on a nearby footpath with a hope that the cops might allow us to board the other train but nothing of such happened. We did not eat since morning and were given only a few packets of biscuit by an NGO and two bottles of water to be shared among all our family members," Khan claimed.
After spending hours under the sun, the distressed family had a reason to rejoice as they got in touch with a local politician from Gonda, UP, who lives in Kurla and is helping residents of the village, go back to their homes.
"We were given some tokens and asked to go to CSMT, where trains were awaiting for passengers. We immediately left from Kurla in a BEST bus. We were allowed to board the bus only after the politician spoke to BEST representatives," Khan claimed.
However, boarding a train was not a cakewalk for the Khan family. "Soon after we reached CSMT, we saw a huge crowd of over thousands of other migrant workers wanting to go back home. We were asked to join the queue near the train, which was stationed on a platform and then were given a few biscuit packets again by an NGO. We had a few bucks left and those were used to purchase water," Khan added.
Till the time of going for print, there was no clarity on whether the Khan family could board the train or not as he was unreachable.
