Coronavirus Outbreak: Gujarat Govt Files FIRs Against 10 For Violating Self-Isolation

The Gujarat government has filed at least 10 FIRs in the past 10 days against lockdown violators and have resorted to using force to keep people indoors. The action comes after as many as 93 people took to streets violating their home quarantine/self-isolation in the past 10 days in the wake of coronavirus pandemic in Gujarat.

The number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 415 on Monday, March 23, with the Centre now resorting to legal action against the violators. According to The Indian Express report, the violators will be fined ₹1000 fine or a may face a jail term up to six months.

According to the Gujarat government, 433 people have been kept in government quarantine while 6,092 are in-home quarantine so far.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation health officials, in a show of heightened surveillance, picked up 10 people residing at Vikramnagar ISRO colony, the living quarters of the ISRO-Space Application Centre (SAC ) employees, for a preliminary check. All of them were allowed to go back after health officials cleared them.

The Ahmedabad police booked two people on Sunday for allegedly violating home quarantine and attending a birthday party, despite a clear advisory issued by the health department to them. According to police, the duo had recently returned from Muscat and were asked to home quarantine themselves for 14 days.

However, when the health officials conducted a surprise check, the two were found attending a birthday party. "We have booked them under IPC sections 188 and 270 for disobedience and malignant act likely to spread infection of the disease, along with section of the Epidemic Disease Act," said a senior police officer at Maninagar police station. The AMC authorities had to forcefully quarantine people on 19 instances.

Tackling Mesures

Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner, Vijay Nehra, said they are tackling the issue of effective quarantining through the helpline numbers where people can complain if their neighbours or others are not adhering to the home quarantine. "In such cases, we will check the travel history (of the said person) and if not followed, we will institutionally quarantine them," said Nehra.

Secondly, the state government sources a list of people with locally issued passports from Ministry of External Affairs and forwards it to the urban local body.

Nehra added that they have received 7,000 names from the list. A special data centre has been established where the data is first sorted on the basis of pin-code so as to allocate it zone-wise and further ward-wise. The AMC is deploying thousands of its officials from across departments for the purpose.

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