Tens of thousands of impoverished migrant workers are on the move across India, walking on highways and railway tracks or riding trucks, buses and crowded trains in blazing heat.

Some are accompanied by pregnant wives and young children, braving threats from the coronavirus pandemic.

They say they have been forced to leave cities and towns where they had toiled for years building homes and roads after they were abandoned by their employers — casualties of lockdown to stop the virus from spreading.