On Tuesday, April 14, thousand of migrant workers assembled at Bandra station in Mumbai, trying to board trains to their hometowns.
The crowd was falsely led to believe that a train would run from Bandra Railway Station which would take them home. Their belief was reportedly supported by a tweet from Vinay Dubey, (a local labour leader) that read “Chalo Ghar Ki Ore” (Let’s go home.)
The crowd started to gather at the station around 3 PM and was made up of migrants from UP, Bihar, and West Bengal. The migrants tried to get permission from a nearby police station to go home but were refused. Following this, the crowd started to swarm the suburban station and the police resorted to lathi-charge to control the situation.
So far, three FIRs have been filed in regard to the situation. The first one is against Vinay Dubey whose tweet is said to have instigated the workers to assemble at the station. The second is against 800-1,000 migrants who had assembled at the station. The migrants have been booked for ‘disobedience of government order’ under relevant sections of the IPC. The last FIR was against Rahul Kulkarni, a correspondent for a Marathi news channel, for incorrectly flashed news about trains restarting. So far only Dubey has been arrested.
This story shows the effects of fake news can mislead many and have potentially dangerous consequences.
Hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in a televised address to the nation on what was supposed to be the last day of the lockdown, a large number of migrant workers, jobless and said to be without access to food and basics, came out to demand transport arrangements to return to their native places.
Maharashtra Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray, assured migrant workers that there was no need to panic, and that the day lockdown would be relaxed, the state government will arrange for migrants to go back home.