Nearly 20 migrant workers who were returning to their native state, Odisha, on a Shramik special train from Ahmedabad, allegedly jumped off the train in Angul district on Sunday evening to escape the Odisha government’s 28-day compulsory quarantine period which was enforced three days ago.

The train reduced pace near a railway bridge at Majhika in Angul district, where at least 20 migrant workers jumped off.

‘Though at least 20 of them had tried to escape, we caught only seven and handed them over to the police,’ Birabara Nayak, the sarpanch of Benagadia gram panchayat said.

Angula Superintendent of police (SP) Jagmohan Meena said that the seven people hailed from the neighbouring Deogarh district. ‘They’re apprehensive of staying in an institutional quarantine facility for 28 days. They’ve been lodged at a quarantine centre in Angul district,’ the SP added.

In another similar incident, a bus ferrying at least 30 migrants who belonged to Odisha and were returning from Tamil Nadu’s Kanchipuram district, dropped 15 of them in Cuttack on Monday morning instead of dropping them to a quarantine centre in Jagatsinghpur district.

The authorities dropped six of them at a college in Cuttack, a quarantine centre, and the remaining nine were moved to Jagatsinghpur district in an auto-rickshaw.

The Odisha government had announced a 28 day mandatory quarantine period for migrant workers returning to the state after it observed a longer incubation period for the COVID-19 cases in the state.

The return of migrants to Odisha, from Gujarat, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, has been accused of causing a drastic rise in COVID-19 cases in the state.

There have been multiple instances of migrants evading quarantine centres in Odisha in the past week. For instance, 150 migrants in Ganjam district’s Beguniapada fled the quarantine centre citing poor quality of food and lack of water in the facility.

Some migrants from Bhadrak district, who came from Gujarat’s Surat, de-boarded the bus several kilometres ahead of the quarantine centre and directly went to their homes.

Also Read: Gujarat: Thousands Of Migrant Workers Protest In Surat To Go Home, 55 Arrested, 60 Detained