Even as Madhya Pradesh with 3986 positive cases of Coronavirus and 225 fatalities, is grappling to contain the pandemic, a huge crowd gathered to welcome a Jain monk at his arrival at Sagar district, on Tuesday, defying the social distancing guidelines for preventing spread of virus.
Muni Pranam Sagar, and his entourage reached Banda town located about 35 km from the district headquarters and hundreds of people can be seen on road without masks to welcome the monk and his group, in the video clips which went viral on social media, following which police started an investigation into the incident.
“This seems to be a case of violation of preventive orders issued under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) Section 144. Directives have been issued to Banda police station officials to register a case after verification of the videos,” Additional Superintendent of Police (Sagar) Praveen Bhuria was quoted by news agency PTI as saying, on Wednesday.
He added that the police got information about the incident from videos shared on social media and both social distancing norms and orders banning large gatherings (under Section 144), were apparently violated.
Banda police station in-charge Kamal Singh said that they are going to register a case against around 500 unidentified people, for violation of the preventive orders issued during the nationwide lockdown.
As India is under lockdown for more than 50 days and PM Modi had already extended it twice and heading for a third extension while emphasising on social distancing as the only way to pass the “agni pariksha”of the deadly outbreak which has infected 74,281 people and killed 2,415 people so far, this incident showed that maintaining “do gaz doori ” to break the chain of transmission is easy forgotten by people.