Man who fled from quarantine facility in Kerala tracked down in Assam
A man, who had escaped from a quarantine facility in Kerala, was tracked down on a train in Assam on Wednesday at midnight, after more than 48 hours of frantic search by the railways and state police forces.
A man, who had escaped from a quarantine facility in Kerala, was tracked down on a train in Assam on Wednesday (March 18) at midnight, after more than 48 hours of frantic search by the railways and state police forces.
“The 24-year-old was taken back for isolation to a railways hospital in Assam’s New Bongaigaon after deboarding him from the Kanchanjunga Express,” the Northeast Frontier Railway’s spokesperson Subhanan Chanda said.
The man, a native of Assam’s Morigaon district, was quarantined in a hotel in Kerala after he showed symptoms of COVID-19. However, on March 16, he escaped from the hotel along with two others.
The Kerala police found by tracking his mobile phone that Islam had boarded a train. Since he was a resident of Morigaon, Kerala police alerted the police in Assam.
“We were informed by the Kerala police that a man from Assam, along with two others, fled a quarantine facility there,” said Morigaon SP Swapnaneel Deka. Assam police took up a manhunt with the help of Railway Protection Forces after receiving the information.
Police had last traced his mobile phone when he was somewhere in West Bengal. All railway stations along the route were alerted to track Islam down. He was finally detained at the New Bongaigaon railway station.
During the interrogation, the man, who worked in a restaurant at Kozhikode, told the police that he boarded a Howrah-bound train from Chennai. After reaching Howrah in West Bengal, he boarded the Agartala-bound train from Sealdah in Kolkata, police sources said.
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The coach in which he travelled has been sanitised. All passengers from that coach were asked to be quarantined at their houses after they were screened by doctors.
He has been kept in isolation under the watch of railway police personnel to prevent him from escaping again.
Keeping a tab on people in “home quarantine” has emerged to be the biggest challenge in the fight against coronavirus.
An 18-year-old boy, who flouted the home isolation protocol, tested positive for COVID-19 in Kolkata on Tuesday night, putting several others he came in contact with at a risk.