Kashmir-return labourers say little option but to go back to

Majority of the 138 labourers who returned to the city on Monday from Jammu and Kashmir after a 46-hour train journey, said they will eventually have to make their way back to the Valley for making ends meet.

Alighting from a single coach that accommodated all of them, the workers -- employed mainly in plyboard factories, apple orchards -- said they will keenly follow the developments in newly-formed union territory, and wait for the right time to return for employment again.

The group hailing from West Bengal and Assam was brought back by the Jammu Tawi Express at the initiative of the West Bengal government, after five labourers from the state were gunned down in a terror attack in Kulgam last month.

An eldery person from the team that comprised mostly young men, said he worked for 20 years in a plyboard factory in Kashmir.

"There has been tension in the Valley earlier as well, but we have never had to come back like this," 46-year-old Abul Kalam from Kushmandi in ...