Lawyer Sagheer Ahmed Khan had deposited 25 lakh rupees at the Supreme Court to facilitate the repatriation of migrant workers in the midst of the closure.
As thousands of migrant workers returned to their villages in Uttar Pradesh from Mumbai after train services resumed last month, lawyer Sagheer Ahmed Khan, who had deposited 25 lakh rupees at the Supreme Court to facilitate their repatriation amid of closure, he has urged the court. to distribute the amount to the families of five migrant workers who died on the way home, either on foot, by bicycle, by train, or by mini-trucks.
Among the deceased that Khan has named in his petition is Arveena Khatoon, a mother of two who died in May after traveling on a special Shramik train that she boarded in Ahmedabad. A video clip of her motionless body at the Muzaffarpur train station in Bihar with her 18-month-old son playing with the cloth covering her, had become a powerful emblem for the trauma faced by thousands of migrant workers returning home. in the middle of closing.
“Since the trains started to board until June 1, many migrant workers had already returned home. The court had said that it could withdraw the Rs 25 lakh that it had deposited for repatriation but proposed that, since it had already deposited the amount in court, that Rs 5 lakh be distributed to the families of five migrant workers who had died in On the way home the court has allowed it, “Khan told The Indian Express.
The other deceased worker’s Khan named in his petition included a Machlishehar man in Jaunpur, whose body was found in the bathroom of a Shramik train; Mohammed Javed, who died in an accident in Nashik while taking his family from Bhiwandi to Lucknow in a minivan; Suraj Bali Chauhan, who died in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh while walking to Siddharth Nagar from Bhiwandi; and Tabarak Ansari, also from Bhiwandi, who died in Barwani in Madhya Pradesh while cycling to Maharajganj.
In their June 12 order, Judge Ashok Bhushan, Judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul, and Judge MR Shah ordered the SC registry to transfer the amount to the Legal Service Authority (LSA) of the five affected districts from which the deceased came. He said that the LSA should guarantee the disbursement of the amount to the families of the workers after due verification.
In his petition, Khan wrote that he had named the five workers based on limited research of the information available in the public domain. None of the deceased was known to him or related to him.
“Large numbers of migrants also died on the way home due to hunger, exhaustion, and other unfortunate reasons. Migrants are the poorest of the poor, therefore, the dependent relatives of migrants, who have died on the way, live in a very precarious condition, “stated Khan’s request.
Khan, who had migrated to Mumbai from Mahuari in UP’s Sant Kabir Nagar, first moved to SC in May. He said in his petition that “his conscience does not allow him to let poor immigrants remain in the lurch” and offered to pay to facilitate his journey from Mumbai to UP “regardless of caste, creed, and religion.”
Speaking to The Indian Express earlier, Khan, whose trip to a 3-BHK in a luxurious Wadala skyscraper began living in a furniture store in Vasai and included a three-year stay in Dharavi, said: “It is not about food or shelter. It’s about self-esteem. They (migrant workers) may be poor but they have self-esteem. ”
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