West Bengal Labourers, Back From Kashmir After Kulgam Attack, See Little Option But To Return To Valley To Make Ends Meet

Alighting from a single coach that accommodated all of them, the workers, employed mainly in plyboard factories, apple orchards, said they will keenly follow the developments in the newly-formed Union Territory, and wait for the right time to return for employment again.

The group, hailing from West Bengal and Assam, was brought back by the Jammu Tawi Express at the initiative of the West Bengal government after five laborers from the state were gunned down in a terror attack in Kulgam last month.

An elderly person from the team that comprised mostly of young men said he’d worked for 20 years in a plyboard factory in Kashmir. “There has been tension in the Valley earlier as well, but we have never had to come back like this,” 46-year-old Abul Kalam from Kushmandi in Dakshin Dinajpur district, told PTI.

Kalam said security forces arranged for their travel to Jammu station from their respective workplaces. Walking barefoot on the platform and managing a smile despite the long journey, Kalam said he was asked to go back to his native place by his employers.

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