3 container trucks carrying over 170 migrant workers seized in UP

Three container trucks carrying over 170 migrant workers during the lockdown were seized by police in Uttar Pradesh, close on the heels of death of 26 migrants in a collision between a trailer and a truck on which they had hitched rides. A total of 178 migrant workers were found travelling in unauthorised vehicles on Saturday, officials said.

Seventy-eight migrant workers were found holed up inside a container truck in Shamli on Saturday evening, SP Vinit Jaiswal said. The truck which was on its way to Ludhiana in Punjab was impounded by police and all the migrant workers were sent to a shelter home, he said.

In a similar incident, a container truck was intercepted by police in Muzaffarnagar, the SP said. During checking, police found 60 migrant labourers sitting inside the vehicle, he said.

Police said arrangements were being made to send these labourers to their native places in West Bengal by special trains. Forty migrant workers were found travelling in a truck by police in Muzaffarnagar district on Saturday night, Jaiswal said.

The truck was intercepted at the Baghela checkpost, he said. It is learnt that authorities have sealed all entry points to Muzaffarnagar and Shamli to prevent travelling of migrant workers on foot and in unauthorised vehicles following a series of road accidents.

At least 26 migrants were killed and 34 others injured when a trailer and a stationary truck collided on a highway near Auraiya in the early hours of Saturday, police said. Most of the victims were sitting on sacks of lime powder loaded on the trailer, and were crushed when the vehicles overturned and fell into a ditch following the crash near an eatery between 3 am and 3.30 am on the Auraiya-Kanpur Dehat stretch of National Highway 19, they said.