Migrants on Mumbai streets: Police register FIR

Mumbai: An FIR has been registered against at least 1000 migrant workers for assembling near Bandra railway station in Mumbai on Tuesday in defiance of the coronavirus lockdown norms, causing a public health scare, police said.

“No arrests have been made yet and the workers are being identified,” a Bandra police station official said.

“We have registered an FIR under sections 143 (Whoever is a member of an unlawful assembly), 147 (Punishment for rioting), 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 188 (Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) and 186 (Obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” he said.

Besides section 3 of the Epidemic Diseases Act has also been invoked against them, he said.

More than 1,000 migrant workers, who earn daily wages and been stuck in Mumbai since the last three weeks, gathered in Bandra around 3 PM demanding transport arrangements to go back to their native places, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the coronavirus-enforced curbs till May 3.

The gathering in suburban Bandra, in violation of lockdown norms, created a potential law and order situation for an overstretched police force and the men in uniform resorted to mild force to scatter the crowd.

According to a police official, the daily wage earners assembled at the bus depot and squatted on the road leading to the suburban railway station.

Hundreds of migrant workers took to the streets of Mumbra town in Thane district on Tuesday, demanding that they be sent to their hometowns in light of the COVID-19 lockdown, which has rendered them jobless.

Workers, mostly from Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, who live in rented accommodations, claimed house-owners were demanding rent from them and they were unable to procure essentials.