Photo Of Migrant Worker Unable To Get Home While His Son Was Sick To Death, Leaves The World In Deep Sadness

While the COVID-19 pandemic is making people’s lives miserable, especially the poor and migrant workers in India. A heartbreaking photo of a migrant laborer, with face showing anguish as he’s sitting on the roadside in Delhi, took the world to deep sadness. In the photo, he is on the phone speaking to his wife about their ill son. The photo has become a symbol of how migrant workers couldn’t get home during the India lockdown, stranded far away from their families, having no money.

Rampukar Pandit is a construction worker in Delhi, who heard that his son was seriously sick, at 11 months old. As the entire country was on full lockdown, there was no public transport operating for him to get home in Bihar, 1,200 kilometers from Delhi, he began walking. But he was exhausted and starving when reaching Nizamuddin Bridge, he couldn’t go any further.

On May 11, a photographer, Atul Yadav from the Press Trust of India, spotted Pandit crying. He offered Pandit water and biscuit, but the man refused, saying that food would choke him. He said he could not eat while his son was sick. Yadav said:

“He was so emotional I had to stop shooting. He had been sitting on the road for three days.”

Pandit said to Yadav:

“We labourers don’t belong to any country. All I want is to go home and see my son.”

In the evening, the same day, Pandit reached a police station. As he was waiting for some help from the police, a group of well-wishers, who had seen Yadav’s tweet about the poor 38-year-old man, found Pandit.

At the time, Pandit’s wife had called him, telling him that their son had died. A woman from the group of well-wishers bought Pandit a train ticket so he could go home.

Yadav’s photograph touched everyone’s heart, becoming a perfect illustration of the difficulties migrant workers in India are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, who haven’t been able to get home. Having no money, no vehicles, they resorted to walking to hundreds of kilometers to reach their families.

How much longer will this tragedy go on?

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