“About 50 of us were seating and waiting for food and the bus at the satellite bus adda when some men in protective suits came and began spraying water on us.
In a shocking incident, migrants who were returning to their homes in Uttar Pradesh were sprayed with a chemical on Sunday by a team on sanitising duty at the Bareilly bus stand. According to reports, the migrants who had walked down from Noida and Delhi, were told to sit at the bus stand by officials who said that they would be taken on buses and would be given food. Mohd Afzal, one in the group, said, “About 50 of us were seating and waiting for food and the bus at the satellite bus adda when some men in protective suits came and began spraying water on us. They said that they were form the sanitization team and were sanitizing us. The children began crying and women were also shocked.” According to sources, the sanitizing team sprayed the group with a diluted mixture of sodium hypochlorite. Sodium Hypochlorite is the main ingredient in laundry bleach. It is used extensively as a bleaching agent in the textile, detergents, and paper and pulp industries. It is also used as a disinfectant. Mohd Afzal said that after they were sprayed with water, the children complained of itching in their eyes while some women developed rashes. “The chemical had a strange smell and after this incident, most of us left Bareilly and decided to continue our journey on foot,” he said. Mohd Afzal works as a courier boy in a company in Noida and has returned to his home in Shahjahanpur. None of the officials in Bareilly and Lucknow, however, were ready to comment on the incident. Calls made to the Bareilly district magistrate’s office did not elicit any response.
