Social activist Divyanshu Upadhyaya on Tuesday tweeted to actor Sonu Sood about families of 350 boatmen who ply boats on the Ganga River in Varanasi, were going without food because they were unable to ply boats due to floods.

 

Within an hour, Sonu Sood responded to the tweet and wrote, "No member of these 350 families of Varanasi Ghats will sleep hungry after today."

 

Thereafter, Sood's associate, Neeti Goel, called Upadhyay and assured him that ration kits will be made available to them in Varanasi itself within one hour.

 

"We got 350 ration kits from the actor within no time. Each kit contained 5 kg flour, 5 kg rice, 2 kg gram, a packet of spice and other eatables. Out of 350, 100 kits were immediately distributed among the families of the boatmen on Wednesday," said a member of Upadhyaya's team.

 

Divyanshu Upadhyay, who runs a non-profit organisation called Hope, said that the payment to the local vendor has been done by Sood.

 

Upadhyay said that during the lockdown, 'Hope' had been distributing relief items among the boatmen fraternity, but the 200 relief hampers that they had, proved to be insufficient.

 

"I tweeted to Sonu Sood because I had heard of the immense work he has been doing to help people and he promptly responded to our call and took action," he said.