Aurangabad train disaster: as bodies arrive, family members say victims were exploited, driven to despair

The 16 migrant workers were hit by a freight train early Friday morning when they slept on the tracks.

Like the bodies of 16 migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh, which were run over by a train in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, Upon arriving in their villages on Saturday, their relatives said they had asked the victims to stay, but that they went home on foot due to hunger and lack of money.

The 16 migrant workers were hit by a freight train early Friday morning when they slept on the tracks.

Relatives of five of the victims, from the Umaria district, blamed a labor contractor for pushing them to the limit. They said he did not give them money when they asked for it and instead gave them a bank account number. The victims, in turn, asked their relatives at home to deposit money in the account.

The relatives deposited everything they could. A victim’s wife earned 500 rupees by collecting mahua flowers. Another’s wife borrowed 1,000 rupees from a self-help group. Small amounts such as Rs 500, Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 were deposited into the account.

The contractor allegedly took a cut from each transaction, often as much as Rs 500, leaving the rest to the workers. Families said they had not been paid last month’s wages. They received no help from the steel company where they worked, family members said.

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Umaria Swarochish Somvanshi’s collector, who has spoken to some of the victims’ families, said he would send a report by the subdivisional magistrate to the state government, recommending registering an FIR against the contractor by contacting Aurangabad authorities. He said the SDM would visit the bank where family members deposited money and verified transactions. “There is no reason to distrust them, but once the transactions substantiate the family members’ claims, I will send the report recommending the prosecution of the contractor, even under the provisions of the SC / ST Act,” he said.

The bodies arrived in Jabalpur from Aurangabad on Saturday. From there, they were taken to the villages of the victims in the Umaria and Shahdol districts. The last rites of five workers from Chilhari, Amdi, Raksa and Maman Umaria were carried out in the late afternoon. The funeral of 11 workers belonging to the villages of Antoli and Shahargarh in Shahdol was delayed.

Nine of the people killed on Friday were from the village of Antoli. Some of them were related and lived close to each other. Both Shahdol and Umaria are tribal-dominated districts. Every year thousands of people migrate from these regions in search of work.

READ | Migrant workers did not walk tracks from Jalna: Rly officials

The site where a freight train ran over 16 migrants. (Express photo)

Shahdol’s collector Satendra Singh said that most of the relatives had dissuaded the victims from returning home, given the risks involved. Santosh Napit’s father, one of Shahdol’s victims, told the fundraiser that he asked his son not to return because he had some money and could have continued for a few more days.

Nirvesh and Rajbahoram’s seventieth birthday father was working in a field when a local management team arrived in his village on Friday. He had no idea that his two children had died in the accident. He said he had sent his children to another state to work because the family found it difficult to make ends meet.

Gajraj Singh, another villager from the Antoli village in Shahdol, was waiting for his sons Brajesh and Shivdayal. Brajesh, 28, had told him on the phone that they had a limited ration and were on foot.

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