Chandrapur: A person employed in Ahmednagar had to walk more than 135 kilometres from Nagpur to reach his home in the Saoli teshil district of Chandrapur following a travel ban due to coronavirus scare. He was rescued by Sindewahi police some 25 kilometres from his home.
Narendra Shelke is a resident of Jambh Village in Saoli Teshil and works as a laborer at a sugar factory in Ahmednagar. The 7-day lockout declared by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday took all the workers off guard. Being desperate, the staff from Nagpur, along with Shelke, immediately took a private vehicle and left for Nagpur on Tuesday morning. By that time, however, PM Modi had declared a national lockdown. As their taxi entered Nagpur on Tuesday night, the entire nation had gone to full lockdown.
PSI Gopichand Nerkar, who rescued Shelke in Sindewahi, confirmed that employees from Nagpur had gone to their homes and had returned to Ahmednagar by taxi. Shelke had been left stranded in Nagpur. Shelke, having struggled to find any support and no one to give him a ride, decided to go back home during the week of Wednesday.
He took the Nagpur-Nagbhid road and started walking towards his destination. In Umred, he was stopped by the police. The cops helped him get a lift in a truck, but it took him a few kilometres and he was dropped again, said PSI Nerkar, citing Shelke.
Shelke began walking back to his destination and reached Sindewahi Tehsil headquarters, still 25 km away from his village late in the night. He had driven more than 135 km on foot as the cops stopped him at Shivaji Chowk in Sindewahi. As the tired Shelke recounted his sorrow, the police took him to the local rural hospital and brought him some food from their house, said PSO Sindewahi Nishikant Ramteke.
He said that Shelke had only survived water for two days after starting from Ahmednagar. As soon as he recovered his strength, the police took the assistance of the local NGO and arranged his transport to Jambh Village in Saoli Teshil, Ramteke said.
The Sindewahi police told the local authorities in Saoli about the arrival of Shelke, and he was placed in quarantine at home immediately after arriving in his village, Ramteke said. Shelke himself may not have been informed.
