Man returns to UP on foot from B’luru, dies of snakebite in hour

Man returns to UP on foot from B’luru, dies of snakebite in hour

Petlee.Peter@timesgroup.com

Bengaluru:02.06.2020

He walked a gruelling 2,000km for 12 days from Bengaluru to reach his village in Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh and gave his mother an ecstatic hug. Barely an hour later, 23-year-old Salman Khan was dead — from a snakebite, after he stepped into a field to wash up after the dusty journey home.

His mother, who had been waiting anxiously for the youngest of her five children to return, went into shock following his death on May 26. Rukshan, in her 50s, has been bedridden since, slipping in and out of consciousness. Having buried their youngest, the family now struggles to foot her hospital bills.

It was on December 29 last year that Salman took a train to Bengaluru to earn a living. He found work, along with many others from Gonda, at a construction site in Banashankari and regularly sent money home. The family, which lives in a shack in Dhanepur village in Srinagar Babaganj of Gonda in east-central UP, had hoped their days in abject poverty were numbered.

On the dawn of May 12, Salman and 10 others embarked on their journey home by foot, unable to stay on any longer after the lockdown. Dodging police in Karnataka and Andhra, swimming across the Tungabhadra and spending a few days in quarantine, he finally made it home at 5pm on May 26 — exhausted, hungry and feet covered in blisters.

“Our contractor didn’t pay us for two months. We waited and then tried to get on a train. After four days of long waits outside police stations, humiliation and caning, 10 of us decided to walk home and set out on May 12,” said Koushal Kumar, also a Gonda native, who worked with Salman.

“We reached the Karnataka border that day and were chased away by police,” recalled Kumar, who then guided the group through an alternative route along the railway line. Days of walking got the group to Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh. They waded through the Tungabadra river on the AP-Telangana border and managed to enter Maharashtra by hitchhiking a brief ride on a tractor. “Mostly moving in the dark to escape police, we walked and hitched rides on trucks through Madhya Pradesh and entered Prayagraj,” said Kumar on phone.

“My mother and I were overjoyed to see him. His foot was badly cut, and he was frail,” said Riyaz Khan, breaking down on phone.

After tears and hugs, Salman stepped into a sugarcane field nearby to wash up. “We found him dead an hour later. Our mother went into a shock on seeing his body and had to be hospitalised,” said Riyaz.

Barely an hour after he reached home, 23-year-old Salman Khan died from a snakebite when he stepped into a field to wash up after the dusty journey. His mom is in shock after momentary reunion