Seeking to go home, quarantine centre inmates attack officials; 5 injured

Panicked after one of them tested positive for COVID-19, inmates of a quarantine centre in Sitamarhi district of Bihar on Thursday blocked a road demanding to go home and attacked government officials and policemen when they tried to intervene, police said. A block development officer, a circle officer, the station house officer of the local police station and two other policemen suffered minor injuries when migrant workers under institutional quarantine at Sursand block pelted them with stones.

The migrants kept in the Saryu High School building which has been converted to a quarantine centre at Sursand demanded that they be allowed to go home after one of the inmates tested positive for coronavirus infection on Wednesday, Pupri Sub-Divisional Police Officer Sanjay Kumar Pandey said. The administration did not allow the protesting migrants to return home as their quarantine period was not over.

They created uproarious scenes at the quarantine centre and blocked Sursand-Pupri road, Pandey said. After getting the information, BDO Mohammad Yunus Salim, Circle Officer Sanjay Kumar, SHO Bhola Kumar Singh and other policemen reached the spot and tried to pacify them.

However, the angry protestors hurled stones at the officials and the police team, leaving five of them injured, said the SDPO who reached the spot and took the situation under control. Those involved in the stone-pelting incident are being identified and action would be taken against the culprits, he said.