After losing mother, youth begins journey on foot from Raipur to home in Varanasi

At a time when India is under 21-day lockdown in a bid to contain coronavirus spread, hundreds of migrant workers have started walking on foot to reach their homes as their factories and offices are closed.

Amid the crisis, a youth along with his two friends has begun a journey on foot from Raipur to Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi as he has lost his mother.

The distance between Raipur to Chhattisgarh is around 654 kilometres, which takes aroud 14 hours by bus.Grief-stricken Murakeem, whose mother passed away on March 25, is being accompained by Vivek and Praveen. The trio reached Baikunthpur in Koriya district of the state from Raipur in three days.

One of Murakeem's friends told ANI, "We walked for about 20 kilometres and also took lift on our way from two to three people. When we reached Baikunthpur, a medical shop owner here, helped us."

Meanwhile, hundreds of people, comprising mostly of migrant workers and their families, from Delhi, Gurugram and other places, gathered at the Lal Kuan in Uttar Pradesh, to take buses to their respective destinations amid the lockdown.The majority of those who arrived at Lal Kuan, had completed their journey from their places of stay in Delhi to the place of departure for the buses on foot.While Prime Minister Narendra Modi had imposed a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the Uttar Pradesh government had decided to ply these buses to help thousands of migrant workers who were stuck in the national capital and had started returning on foot to their native places in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, among others.