A pregnant woman walked for three days to reach her village of Podili in Prakasam district from her workplace at Challakere in Karnataka, where she had gone to work as a daily wager along with her husband, child and two relatives.
The family said they made the arduous trek back home as they had no more money left to manage even two square meals a day.
Krupanand and his wife, who is eight months pregnant, said the contractor who had employed them had allegedly refused to pay them their dues ever since the lockdown was clamped, forcing them to walk back to their village in the absence of any transportation.
The family had walked for around 135 km before reaching Anantapur, when a woman named Padmavathi saw the family sitting by the roadside and asked if they needed help. After listening to their plight, she immediately bought them food and sent them to Podili in her car by obtaining a vehicle permit from the Superintendent of Police on Sunday.
Krupanand told The Hindu that while he and his family were lucky to have got the help of a good samaritan, there were countless other migrant labourers on the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border who were facing similar ordeals ever since the lockdown left them without any livelihood.
