Who is Vinay Dubey, the man that threatened a foot march from Mumbai to North India if train services weren’t resumed?

The rumours that originally started as a WhatsApp forward eventually became mainstream media news when Marathi channel ABP Majha made it into a story. This resulted in contractors telling the migrant workers that services were resumed.

The man behind this problem was Vinay Dubey, a self-proclaimed entrepreneur and social worker based out of Navi Mumbai. Dubey has been formally arrested by Mumbai police now, under IPC sections 117, 153 A, 188, 269, 270, 505 (2) and Section 3 of The Epidemic Diseases Act. He will be produced before a local court later today.

His arrest comes after uploading a video on YouTube that threatened a foot march towards North India if train services weren’t resumed.

But the question arises: Who is Vinay Dubey? According to his Facebook profile, Dubey seems to have quite a fan following, with 2,18,573 followers on his site. He had even fought elections in 2019 Lok Sabha as an independent candidate

On April 13, Dubey put out a Facebook post where he warned of consequences if the Central and state governments did not resume train services to let migrant workers go back home. He had shared other posts where he claimed that he had arranged 40 buses for stranded migrant workers stuck in Maharashtra, so that they could be taken back homes.

A day earlier, Dubey shared a video where he was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s implementation of the lockdown, stating that it had been executed without any planning or keeping the poor in mind. “Thousands of migrant workers are stuck without any money in their pocket or a chance to go back home,” Dubey said.

Dubey had even predicted his arrest. On April 11, he had shared a Facebook post where he said he did not mind going to jail as long as the migrant workers who were trapped in Maharashtra found a way back home.

His Twitter bio also has savemyindia.org as part of its profile. The website protests the NRC/CAA that had been the top news story before coronavirus took over our lives.

Dubey has also been seen sharing the stage with MNS Chief Raj Thackeray, and also seems to be on good terms with Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh. A few days earlier, Dubey had tweeted that his farther had made a contribution to the state relief fund to combat the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.