HM & son help 33 Gadchiroli, Bhandara women get home

Nagpur: Home minister Anil Deshmukh and his son Salil, a Zilla Parishad (ZP) member, played key roles in the rescue and safe passage of 24 women from Gadchiroli and another nine from Bhandara who were stuck at Vapi in Gujarat for more than two months.

The women, who have been quarantined at their respective districts after reaching on Friday, were hired to work at Vapi by a city-based agency through a central government scheme, it is learnt.

The women had been trying to return but there was no assistance for them until some of them contacted Baramati’s Member of Parliament Supriya Sule, Gadchiroli’s former ZP president Bhagyashree Atram and Rashtravadi Yuvati Congress state president from Osmanabad Sakshana Salgar who too catalysed the rescue process.

Atram, daughter of Aheri MLA and former minister Dharmaraobaba, said the agency that had sent the women to Vapi was not able to bring them back. “We were constantly getting calls and had been trying to bring them back but getting permission was an uphill task,” she said.

“At this point home minister intervened. He took it up at government level to ensure the permission was granted following which buses were arranged on Wednesday evening,” she said.

Gujarat government had dropped the women at Acher near Palghar in Maharashtra from where SP DT Shinde arranged two buses for them to travel home.

Atram had sought assistance from Salil whose team helped the women get food, sanitizers and snacks from Palghar to Nagpur. “We decided to let them halt at Nagpur as it was not safe to travel in the night to Gadchiroli,” said Salil.

City NCP’s senior vice-president Nutan Rewatkar and a woman constable Vandana Dumbhare from Ganeshpeth police stayed with the women at ST bus stop where rooms were made available. The women left city on Friday morning and reached their districts. City’s yuvati president Poonam Rewatkar too was present.