The Mumbai Police have registered an FIR against migrant workers who had assembled outside the Bandra Station keen on going back to their villages on Tuesday, flouting the lockdown rules according to media reports.
A case has been registered against at least a 1,000 workers 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). The Police have also invoked Section 3 of the Epidemic Diseases Act against them. The workers are yet to be identified, the report said.
Meanwhile, the Mumbai Police on Tuesday had also detained a man in Navi Mumbai who may have potentially set off rumours that instigated hundreds of labourers to gather outside the stations in hopes of getting a train back home, as per an
The man has been accused of inciting the migrants through calls for action that he had posted on Facebook and Twitter, the report said. Dubey has been kept in the custody of the Azad Maidan Police Station.
Mumbai’s Bandra railway station had witnessed chaotic scenes on Tuesday afternoon as over 2,000 migrant labours gathered outside the station and the bus depot nearby wanting to get back to their native places. The police had to resort to a mild lathi-charge to disperse the crowd.
The migrant labourers had come to the station hoping that the lockdown would be ending on Tuesday which has now been extended to May 3. Most of them were daily wage workers who were unable to earn during the 21-day nationwide lockdown announced by the government to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and it was difficult for them to survive in the city without any income.
The mob had virtually blocked the road leading to the station by sitting on the road demanding transportation facilities to go back to their native villages. Most of them were natives of West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as previous reports.