Coronavirus update: Good Samaritans of Delhi offer food, water and hope to migrants walking back home

Coronavirus update: Scores of migrants — some of who had been stranded at various ISBTs and railway stations of Delhi while trying to return to their hometowns in various states.

The Good Samaritans of Delhi stepped up on Friday to offer food and water to hundreds of migrants, as they walked to their hometowns in UP, Uttarakhand and even Bihar in the wake of a countrywide lockdown — which has paralysed the transportation — to combat the deadly Covid-19.

Covid-19 update: Noida’s Gautam Buddh Nagar MP Mahesh Sharma with party workers distributing food to stranded migrant workers and homeless persons near Sector 33 Iskcon temple. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

Scores of migrants — some of who had been stranded at various ISBTs and railway stations of the city while trying to return to their hometowns in various states and many who owned factories in the state or worked in them — were offered food and meals at GT Road, a few kilometers before the Delhi-Ghaziabad border, as they walked.

The Good Samaritans included individuals carrying pooris and vegetables packed in silver foils, a group of friends who had arranged a van full of food and water, a working professional who brought water packets loaded on a rickshaw, a grocer who arranged for bananas and another who had hired an auto-rickshaw to bring food.

Wearing masks and hand gloves, they stopped the walking men, mostly labourers, to offer them some food and water.

Gaurav Aggarwal, who runs a printing press, had arrived with his seven friends to serve, poori-vegetable, bananas and water to the migrants. “We pooled in money, hired a cook and got the food readied. We have stock to serve about 2,000 people. We have so far fed around 200 people,” he said.

Shubham Sharma, supervisor at a security firm, had arranged 500 water packets and hired a cycle-rickshaw to bring them to GT Road near Shahdara.

Then there was a grocer who had brought 100 dozen bananas. “The police are helping me distribute the bananas. I hope people are doing the same at the other side of the border,” he said, refusing to be identified.