Big B books 4 flights to help 700 migrants reach home

Stepping in to help stranded migrants reach their villages, Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan on Wednesday arranged for four special flights to send about 700 people to their homes in Uttar Pradesh.

Sources close to Bachchan said he wanted to book a train for the migrants but the logistics did not work out. The flights were “organised” on Bachchan’s directive by his close aide Rajesh Yadav, managing director of his home production company AB Corp Ltd. They took off from Mumbai for Allahabad, Gorakhpur and Varanasi on Wednesday morning with 180 passengers in each, the sources said. Two more flights with the workers will take off on Thursday.

Yadav, on Bachchan’s behalf, had also recently flagged off 10 buses for 300 migrants to reach their villages in Lucknow, Allahabad, Bhadohi and other places in Uttar Pradesh. This was done in partnership with the dargahs in Mahim and the Haji Ali, a statement said.

Earlier in the week, actor Sonu Sood arranged a special flight to send 180 Assamese migrants home. Last month, he helped 177 workers stuck in Kerala to fly home to Odisha. Sood, who has also arranged for buses to ferry the workers and their families back home, said that he has helped 18,000 to 20,000 workers to go back to their homes in states such as Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.          

The lockdown, which began on March 25, left lakhs of migrants stranded in different parts of the country. With no money and no work, many walked, cycled or hitchhiked their way to villages thousands of kilometres away.