Robbed of money and mobile, he had to part hitch-hike part walk to complete journey

A 45-year-old man reached his home district in central Assam on Sunday night after partly walking for 25 days from Vapi, an industrial town in Gujarat 2,800 km away.

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Jadav Gogoi, a migrant labourer in Vapi, told his rescuers that he began walking on March 27 along the highway. He dodged the police in several districts along the route and hitch-hiked on trucks, sometimes for a fee, to reach a toll gate near his home at Gadharia village in Nagaon district.

He had set out with ₹4,000 but was robbed of money, mobile phone and other belongings on the way and had to beg to survive.

“He could barely move about when he reached the toll gate, walking the last 1,000 km from Bihar. He called up members of his family from the phone of a local person who took pity on him. Our members took him to the nearest police station from where he was admitted to the civil hospital in [district headquarters] Nagaon,” said Dibyajit Hazarika of the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chhatra Parishad.

Doctors said Mr. Gogoi’s condition was stable but he would have to be under quarantine as he had arrived from outside the State. His swab sample had been sent to a laboratory for the COVID-19 test.