‘No work, no money, no food’

Naseemul, 27, is a daily wage worker from Katihar, Bihar. On Tuesday, he was at a chemist’s when he saw a group of migrant workers going past. They told him they intended to go to the Bandra bus depot and demand that trains be arranged to take them back home.

“After sometime, I also went,” Naseem said. “Because we are living in pathetic conditions.”

Naseem lives in a 100 sq ft room with four other people. While he agreed that the lockdown was important – and that he appreciates the government announcing it — he had been looking forward to going home on April 14, when it lifted.

“Our conditions have become miserable here,” he said. “We get one packet of rice as a meal every day, it doesn’t even fill our stomachs. Since this pandemic started, we don’t have any work. We’re worried about our parents, wives, children who are dependent on our income.”

Naseem said railway tickets were still available for booking on apps and websites. “I checked the Dadar-Guwahati Express, which was shown as available on April 15 with 370 seats,” he said. “I hadn’t booked it yet. When others said they were going to the bus depot to demand for trains, I went too, thinking it would help.”

Like Ali, Naseem said he wasn’t “influenced” by anything he saw on social media or news reports about train services. “I did not receive any such message, or see any news report or social media post,” he said. “I think nobody in our area saw any such thing.”

Mohammad Ashraf, 28, agrees. A resident of Abadpur village in Bihar’s Katihar, he saw a crowd of people standing at the bus depot, about 150 metres from his room in Shastri Nagar, and joined them.

“People gathered because all of us had hoped we could go back to our villages after the lockdown,” he said. “Our living conditions here are really difficult.”

Ashraf shares a 250 sq ft room with 10 other migrant workers. “The weather has become hot. We don’t even have space to breathe inside the room,” he said. “We cannot go out, there is no work, no money, no proper food...So when the extension of the lockdown was announced, we were disheartened.”

Khush Mohammad, 29, from Bengal’s Malda, was sitting in his room in Shastri Nagar when his roommates told him that migrants were gathering at the bus depot.

“They said many people from Shastri Nagar are gathering, one by one, to make a demand to start the trains. They asked us to join them,” he said. “So we also went, because we want to go back home.” Khush insisted that the workers gathered “in their individual capacity”, he saw no news reports or social media posts urging the workers to gather.

Khush lives in a 150-200 sq ft room with nine or 10 other people. “We get food once a day after standing in a long line. There are times when some of us don’t get food at all,” he said. “I have just Rs 150 in my pocket. We thought we would leave for our villages after April 14 but with the lockdown extended, everyone is worried. Because we know how we barely managed to survive till now.”

Mohammad Hussain, 26, who is also from Malda, stepped outside his room, which he shares with 15-16 other workers, to throw garbage when he saw the crowd at the bus depot. “I also went there. There were around 3,000 people,” he said. “All were shouting ‘humko gaadi chahiye’.”

Hussain continued: “When the lockdown was extended, many of my fellow labourers panicked, even cried. It may be easy for rich people to live in their houses during the lockdown but for us it isn’t. We live in horrible conditions. That’s why the thought of continuing to live like this got us together at the bus depot.”

Since the Bandra gathering, Hussain said, the workers have started getting food twice a day.

Nazim, 27, a labourer from Katihar, also lives in Shastri Nagar. He told Newslaundry that migrant workers from Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha convened at the bus depot.

“A few people living in Behrampada in Bandra East also came, but 95 percent of the crowd was from our area,” he said. “We just cannot bear to live in the same horrific conditions. That’s why we gathered.”

The three FIRs

The Mumbai police have filed three separate FIRs regarding the incident. One was registered against over 800 unnamed people who had assembled at the bus depot.

The second was filed against Vinay Dubey, a self-proclaimed activist from Navi Mumbai, whose social media posts reportedly called for nationwide protests if the migrant workers were not ferried back home.

The third was filed against Rahul Kulkarni, a journalist with ABP Majha, for purportedly spreading “fake news” that prompted the Bandra gathering.

Abhishek Trimukhe, the Mumbai police’s deputy commissioner for Zone 9, told Newslaundry: “Besides the ABP reporter and Dubey, nine persons have been arrested. These nine were seeking to provoke people who gathered there. An initial inquiry is under process and we are interrogating them.”

Dubey has been remanded in police custody till April 21. “His interrogation started just a day ago. There are many things related to Dubey and we are investigating many of those things,” Trimukhe said. “It will take some time. From whatever material we have gathered on him, it seems he was running some campaign related to this [the migrant workers].”

Did messages circulate on social media asking the migrant workers to gather, or announcing that train services have resumed?

“As of now, our inquiry has not found that anyone received such a message,” Trimukhe said. “They may have been influenced by news or social media, but we are not certain if the call to gather at the bus depot was on the basis of some messages, or was planned.”

A video , purportedly shot during the protest, has gone viral . It shows a man urging a crowd to “continue to protest” until they are paid Rs 15,000 each.

“We are searching for the people who made the video,” Trimukhe said. “Once they are arrested, the picture will get clearer. We are not certain yet if the gathering was planned or if it was a flash mob. But we are sure all the people are from the lanes of Shastri Nagar, which is close to Bandra bus depot, and not from other parts of Mumbai.”

He added that the protesters did not cross police barriers to reach Bandra from other parts of Mumbai.

According to the DCP, there were only 150-odd people at the bus depot when the police first arrived at around 3.15 pm. “People gathered there hoping the administration would resolve their issues in going back home,” he explained. “We started listening to their grievances. This sent a message among them – that the administration will resolve their problems – and they called up more people from the lanes of Shastri Nagar to join them.”