35 travellers to Mecca booked for flouting home-quarantine instructions

Police have registered a case against 35 people who recently returned to Pilibhit from a pilgrimage to Mecca for flouting home-quarantine instructions after two of them tested positive for coronavirus, District Magistrate Vaibhav Srivastava said on Tuesday. The group had travelled to Saudi Arabia on 'umrah' and arrived in Mumbai on March 20 where airport officials stamped them as suspected coronavirus patients and advised them home-quarantine, he said.

The group, however, used a spray to erase the stamps from their hands and took a train to Bareilly and then reached Pilibhit using different means of transport, Srivastava said. They were supposed to be screened again in Pilibhit but they gave the process a miss by erasing the stamps and hiding their travel details from the district authorities, the DM said.

The group was booked under the Epidemic Diseases Act after two of them, a woman and her son, tested positive for COVID-19 and the chief medical officer lodged an FIR, he said. Other members of their family have been screened too, the DM added.

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