LONGDING, Jul 24: The police here have booked a jawan of the Assam Rifles (AR) under Section 51 (1) (b) of the Disaster Management Act and Section 188 of the IPC for violating quarantine norms.
The Longding police informed that the jawan is in facility quarantine since 21 July as he has tested positive for Covid-19, and would be arrested once he is discharged.
Earlier, on 17 July, the AR jawan, who had come from Manipur on leave, gave false information to the personnel at the Kanubari check gate.
He told them that he was returning from Jairampur, in order to avoid facility quarantine.
Based on the false information, he was issued a home quarantine notice. A copy of the notice was also sent to his village chief in Longhua, but the jawan went straight to Dasatong village, where he along with his family resides.
However, the news of his return alarmed the villagers because he had not stayed in facility quarantine after his return from Manipur and was not even maintaining the SOP of home quarantine.
When the issue was brought to the knowledge of the authorities, a team of officials from the district administration and the health department along with police personnel went to Dasatong village and brought the jawan to the facility quarantine in Kanubari on 21 July.
RDT test was conducted on him the next day, and it returned a positive result. The patient has since been shifted to the Covid care centre here while his family, including his children, is housed at the ITI quarantine centre.
“Till now 18 primary contacts of this positive case have been detected, and all are found to be negative,” informed Kanubari MO Dr Taingam Wangsu.
A total of four jawans had returned from Manipur in a hired vehicle. Among them three, including the one who has been booked, are from Longding while one is from Khonsa. The rest of the jawans tested negative and are in facility quarantine.
An FIR was later registered, based on a report from the Kanubari ADC.
Meanwhile, Longding MO Dr Wangnai Wangsu and DSO Dr K Ratan informed that they have so far conducted 152 Ag RDT tests following the incident, during which one person working at the DC office was found to be Covid-19 positive. All other results came out negative.
The samples collected were of the primary contacts of the positive patient, including his family members, staffers of the DC office, and frontline workers who were engaged at the Tissa check gate. (DIPRO)
