An activist Vinay Dubey accused of starting rumours with his social media posts and a television journalist who cited an internal railway ministry note on a special train for migrants have been charged by the Maharashtra government over a gathering of hundreds at Mumbai’s Bandra station last evening, which has raised a huge coronavirus scare. An FIR for rioting has been filed against 1,000 people.
Activist Vinay Dubey, blamed for instigating migrants with social media posts like “Chalo Ghar Ki Ore (let’s head home)”, was arrested from his home in Navi Mumbai this morning.
In a video in wide circulation since yesterday, Dubey is heard asking the government to organize a journey home for the migrants. “I request that after the lockdown gets over on April 14, the state government arrange trains to UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal. They can be quarantined once they get there… They are desperate here, they will die of hunger, if not from coronavirus…We will wait till 14th or 15th, if government does not do anything, I, Vinay Dubey, will start the journey with those migrants on foot…,” the activist says in the video.
The television journalist has been detained and charged in an FIR, but there is no reference by the Maharashtra government to the railway ministry note that he had cited, which, the police suspect, may have prompted the massive gathering near a railway station at suburban Bandra hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the lockdown till May 3. The abrupt shutdown since last month left thousands of migrant workers without jobs, food or shelter and pushed many to take their families and belongings and start for home on foot.
Many were stopped mid-way and put up in shelters, but the migrants complained of being packed into cramped quarters and of having to wait for hours for food.
