“Main majdoor hun, majboor bhi. Main aapka gunehgar hu. Aapki cycle lekar ja raha hu. Mujhe maaf kar dena. Mujhe Bareily tak jana he. Mere pass koi sadhan nahi he aur viklang baccha hai (I am your culprit. But, I am a laborer and also helpless. I’m taking your bicycle. Forgive me. I have no other means to reach and I have a specially-abled child. I have to go to Bareilly),”
Mohammad Iqbal left behind an apology note for the cycle owner.
Iqbal, a migrant worker ‘stole’ a bicycle in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur to pedal his way over 250 kilometers to Bareilly, his home, in Uttar Pradesh.
Sahab Singh of Rarah village of Bharatpur district found the note written by Iqbal while cleaning the veranda of his house, a Hindustan Times report said.
Amid the coronavirus controlled lockdown, there have been several such reports from across the country of stranded migrants walking, cycling or hitch-hiking thousands of kilometers to return to their native places.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants who have no job security or protection were forced to trek hundreds of miles back to their villages-with some dying on the journey.
Last week, sixteen migrant workers in a group of 20 were killed after a cargo train ran over them while they were sleeping on the tracks in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad.
