Actor Sonu Sood has been hailed as a 'superhero' for arranging buses to help migrant workers stranded in Mumbai reach their homes in various states.
In an interview with Film Companion's, Anupama Chopra, he revealed that a migrant woman has named her newborn son after him. Sood had helped the pregnant woman reach her village during the lockdown. He said that the woman's family called him and told him that they had decided to name the boy 'Sonu Sood' Shrivastava. The actor was surprised and touched by the fact that the family had also chosen to keep his surname as the child's middle name.
On Friday, Sood came to the rescue of 117 girls as he helped them reach home in Odisha. The actor airlifted the girls who were stuck in Kochi in Kerala due to the nationwide lockdown. According to a source close to the actor, Sood was informed about the group of girls by a close friend from Bhubaneswar and he decided to help them. A special aircraft was called from Bengaluru to airlift these 177 girls from Kochi and reunite them with their families in Bhubaneshwar.
Recently, Sood also launched a toll free number to facilitate the migrants to reach their home. The actor has transported workers to far off states such as Karnataka, Bihar, Jharkhand and UP. Now he has launched a toll free number - 18001213711 through which one can reach out to Sood's team for help.
"I was getting a lot of calls... thousands of calls everyday. My family and friends were busy collecting the data then we realised we might miss out on a lot of people who we will not be able to approach us. So we decided to open this call centre, it is a toll free number," Sood said. The actor said the attempt is to help as many people as possible to reach their home.
"We have a dedicated team working on it, trying to reach out to maximum people and contact each and every person. We don't know how many people we will be able to help but we will try," he added.
-with PTI inputs
