Chennai to Tripura: Family travels 3,000 km in ambulance to reach home

In yet another desperate attempt of migrants stranded in an unknown land trying to reach their natives, a family from Gomati district of Tripura travelled 3,213 km in an ambulance.

Amid the restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus outbreak, Chanchal Majumder who was stranded in Chennai along with his wife Ashima, reached home on Sunday (April 20) evening, and were sent to a quarantine centre, an official said.

The couple, who hail from Udaipur town, had gone to the southern metropolis for treatment in a private hospital in Chennai and rushed back home in the midst of the ongoing lockdown as their daughter’s marriage is scheduled on May 8.

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“We visited Apollo hospital, where my wife had undergone an operation. When she was supposed to be released from the facility, the lockdown was announced and it was very expensive to stay there. Besides, the marriage of our daughter is fixed on May 8, so we had to hire the ambulance during the lockdown to return home,” Majumder, a retired deputy director of the sports and youth affairs department, told reporters in Agartala on Monday (April 20) evening.

During their long journey, they had to furnish documents of the hospital in different checkpoints of Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura, he said.

“We booked the ambulance from the hospital. One more patient from Tripura was with us in the ambulance with an attendant and a relative,” Majumder said.

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They were quarantined at a centre in Udaipur immediately after they returned to home, Gomati district magistrate Tarun Kanti Debnath said.

“As they crossed through several states and high risk zones, we have shifted them to a quarantine centre. They did not meet their daughter or any other relatives after they returned home,” Debnath said.

Two COVID-19 cases have been reported in Tripura so far, and one has already recovered from the disease while the other is undergoing treatment in a hospital in Agartala.

(With inputs from agencies)