Many migrant labourers and their families have started walking to reach their home towns after the uncertainities of train arrangements and costs. Among them was a group of 20 migrants who undertook the long walk home from Jalna (Maharashtra) to Bhusaval, 157 km apart. The group chose to walk on railway tracks in order to avoid the highway, where they could have been stopped. The group likely assumed that the trains were not running.

Exhausted from their march, they fell asleep on the tracks; and 16 of them were run over by a goods train at 5:15 am on 8 May in Aurangabad. In the photographs and footage of the tracks, are visible their footware, belongings and the rotis that they were carrying.