Is this a well known scam or I ended up not helping someone who genuinely needed help?

So basically today I had a new experience which has left me feeling guilty. I was infront of a food street in Chennai waiting for my cab, when it arrived and I went near the car there was a family sitting on the ground nearby (two men, one woman and a kid), one of the men called me from behind and asked if I understand hindi, I said yes I do (I'm from north), he said he is from Maharashtra and they came here for work and got stranded without any money so he wants some money from me. now I was thinking whether this is genuine or a scam because before I have paid a deaf and mute girl 500rs when I was new to Chennai and later turned out its a well known scam where they come to your PGs every few months with the same slip of printed paper saying she needs money for her college. So I told him I'm a student and I don't have any money then he started saying things like "as a father I'm begging you, you can see my son and wife are here and nobody here understands hindi so nobody is helping me, it won't matter much for you to pay us some money" and stuff like that.. I said I don't have cash so he said you can pay me online, at this point I was really confused on whether I should pay them or not, I had my phonepe open ready to pay them, I was thinking maybe I should just buy them some food instead, then I remembered my cab is still waiting and the timer for otp was running out in the app so I said f*k it and just turned around and sat into the cab. I could hear the woman saying "look he is leaving in a car" Yeah it was a heartless move from me which has left me feeling guilty about it. Its almost 6 in the morning rn and I'm still thinking about it. I'm posting to hear if this is a well known scam so I can feel better about myself coz I'm still thinking maybe they actually needed help and I just left like an a**h*le.