Five migrants on their way home assaulted, robbed near Patel Nagar

Five migrants who were walking to Old Delhi railway station to try and catch a train to their hometown in Bihar were robbed of their cash and mobile phones by four drug addicts who assaulted them with iron rods and sticks and threatened to stab them if they resisted in the early hours of Thursday, the police said.

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Left with little hope of getting back home, the migrants decided to fight back, chased the suspects and caught one of them. “The robbers had left us with nothing. So, we thrashed the one we managed to catch hold of,” one of the victims, Vijender Kumar, said.

The police later nabbed the remaining three suspects and recovered the robbed items, but they remain in their custody as case property.

“We have returned to our rented homes and abandoned the plan of walking to our homes. A journey that earlier felt doable suddenly feels impossible now. We are afraid there would be many people waiting to rob us along the railway tracks,” Vijender said.

The five men, who work in the furniture markets of Hari Nagar and Kirti Nagar in West Delhi, had heard about trains leaving for Bihar from Delhi stations.

They said they hardly had any money left and were surviving on the food distributed at hunger centres.

“We didn’t know that we had to fill forms to be eligible for the journey. No one told us that trains were departing only from New Delhi railway station. Since we always boarded our trains from Old Delhi railway station, we decided to walk till there,” Vijender said.

“We had decided that if we didn’t find a train, we would walk along the railway tracks to our villages,” he said.

Having packed sprouted grams and some beaten rice, the men began their walk in the early hours of Thursday.

But when they neared a railway gate in Prem Nagar, close to Patel Nagar in central Delhi, they were intercepted by four men with sticks, iron pipes and knives, said Sanjay Bhatia, deputy commissioner of police (central).

“The robbers beat us with sticks and rods and threatened to stab us if we did not hand over our phones and cash,” Bijay Kumar, another victim, said.

The migrants lost ₹2,100 in cash, three mobile phones and their Aadhar cards. “I had kept my phone in my bag, so it didn’t get robbed,” Vijender said.

As the suspects began to flee with the robbed items, the migrants decided to chase them on the railway tracks. “We had nothing to lose. So, we thought we would fight them, no matter the cost. One of the robbers wasn’t able to scale the railway crossing gate. We caught hold of him,” Vijender added.

Soon, the police arrived at the scene and interrogated the nabbed the suspect, 21-year-old Amar. “Amar’s interrogation, the CCTV camera footage of the routes the suspects took while fleeing, and local intelligence helped us catch the other suspects too, including a 12-year-old boy. They are all drug addicts, DCP Bhatia said.

All the stolen mobile phones and cash were recovered from them. “We provided the victims with food and stay for the night,” the DCP said.

But the migrants walked back to their rented homes in the morning. “We haven’t told our families about the robbery. Instead, we lied to them that the police sent us back,” Vijender said.