Exacerbating the plight of the migrant workers, three men from Ahmedabad who tried to take advantage of them amid their lockdown crisis have been booked by the police. The stranded migrant workers have been trying all possible ways to get back to their homelands ever since the initial days of the nation-wide lockdown.
Endless crisis of migrant workers
Although these daily wage earners have run out of their money, the government or the concerned authorities have not even arranged free transportation services to ferry them back home.
Ruthlessly, three men from Ahmedabad have reportedly duped almost 300 migrant workers to the tune of Rs 3 lakh by offering them fake train tokens to travel back home. The men, identified as Sanjay Shrikant Mishra, a resident of Nikol village in Ahmedabad, Aditya Shukla, a resident of Nikol and Ashok Singh Rajput, a resident of Odhav in Ahmedabad had claimed that their service would register the workers for a seat in the special Shramik trains going to Uttar Pradesh.
The Ramol police have arrested the accused on Monday, May 18. According to the police, the accused made duplicate copies of the tokens and sold them to the migrant workers for Rs 1,000 each.
"They managed to sell as many as 300 tokens from May 14 to May 15 earning Rs 3 lakh of the hard-earned money of workers and were arrested on Monday for the fraud," said the officer to the media.
The migrant workers were illusioned by the 'fast-track' train service guaranteed by the con men and booked for the tokens.
Fake train tickets sold
The train tickets for these workers are generally issued by the NGO Uttar Bharatiya Vikas Parishad. It facilitates the return journey of migrant workers by issuing them tokens after collecting details. The tokens are issued after ascertaining their credentials, based on which the workers are directed to board specific trains.
The alleged trade of tokens by the men came into the limelight when the tickets taken by 300 workers were found to be fake by the officials in the railway station on Saturday.
Inquiry on this led officials to Sanjay Mishra who had given the workers a token for Rs 1,000. A complaint was subsequently filed on which the Ramol police arrested Mishra and his two other accomplices.
The police have charged the three accused under Indian penal code sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420(fraud), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
