Migrants flee Gujarat: ‘I came back home, packed my bags and ran’

The Sabarmati Express chugged into Lucknow’s Charbagh station past Monday midnight. Most passengers were groggy, but not Raj Kumar Nishad. Memories of the house he had left behind in Vadodara kept him awake.
The train from Gujarat brought with it to Lucknow hundreds of migrant labourers from UP who had for many years made the western state their home.Most nursed sad stories in their hearts, some had tales of horror. Almost all had visions of insecurity.
Packed in buses, trucks and trains, Hindi-speaking people working in Gujarat have begun returning to their native places in Bihar , UP and MP following attacks on them sparked by the rape of a toddler on September 28 by an “outsider”.
Close to 60 cases of assaults against these men and women have so far been registered across Gujarat. Hounded and persecuted, some 50,000 are believed to have already left places like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Himmatnagar, Mehsana, Anand, Panchmahals and Sanand, returning to a life they thought they had escaped.
‘I came back home, packed my bags and ran’
Sitting on the floor in the general compartment, Raj Kumar Nishad, who has to reach Rae Bareli, was still shaken. “I was punished for no fault of mine," he said, tears suddenly flooding his eyes. “I lived with my wife and two children, one 10 and the other 12, in Vadodara.
After the attacks began, mobs of men started patrolling the lanes and bylanes of the city, looking for people from UP and Bihar. I first had to stop my kids from going to school. On Saturday, my factory in-charge announced that migrant workers should leave the state and wait for the situation to normalize. I came back home, packed my bags and ran.”
Sonu Kumar, 19, said even cops these days advise workers from outside to return home. “If those who are supposed to protect us ask us to flee, it’s hopeless,” he said. “I had complained to the local police about the threats I was receiving. I was beaten up once. But they said they were helpless. I don’t know what I will do in my UP village as I had gone to Gujarat because there was nothing for me here.”
Far away in Bihar, Suresh Sahni, who has to get down at Khagaria, said he had booked train tickets for November 10 to celebrate Chhath. “But what’s there to feel happy about now,’’ he asked. “I have no job, no salary. I took the first train I got to Patna.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Mohammad Karim said his body still hurts from the blows a group of men rained on him. “I had never been so afraid before,” he whispered.
“I had seen some miscreants barging into houses in my neighbourhood and beat up several people. But I didn’t know I would be cornered too. On Saturday, as I was returning from the factory in Mehsana where I worked, a mob surrounded me and asked about my native place and language. When I said ‘I’m from Bihar’, they thrashed me and asked me to leave Gujarat before October 12.”
(With inputs from C B Pandey and Farrukh Nadim)