Brahmins hold Yaga; kill animals, consume meat along with soma rasa'

Chamaranagara, Mar 29: As many as 595 Tamil Nadu-based fishermen, who were working in Mangaluru, crossed the Karnataka border and reached their state via Chamarajanagar on Saturday.

Police said following the lockdown, the fishermen had left Mangaluru in more than 20 vehicles. The fishermen crossed the Karnataka border through Punajur check-post. However, the vehicles returned after dropping them near Hasanur check-post in Tamil Nadu.

As the fishermen had no proper documents, they were stopped by Tamil Nadu Police. However, the police allowed them after screening. The Tamil Nadu government arranged vehicles to ferry them, said a police officer.

Kasaragod, Jul 26: First funeral, now wedding. Forty-three persons who attended a wedding at Pilankatta in Chengala panchayat in Kasaragod on July 17 have tested positive for Covid-19, said district medical officer (DMO) A V Ramdas.

They include the bride and the groom. Collector D Sajith Babu has asked all those who attended the wedding to go into home quarantine for 14 days. Those with Covid symptoms should get in touch with the nearest primary health centre, he said.

The DMO said samples of 128 persons linked to the wedding were tested, of which 43 turned out positive. Earlier, 44 persons who attended a funeral in Cherkala in the first week of July had tested positive. The funeral was declared a cluster and the government had to test 522 persons linked to the funeral.

The collector said those taking part in funeral or weddings without following the Covid protocol would be booked under the Kerala Epidemic Diseases Act. If convicted, they would face up to two years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of `10,000. Kasaragod police said they will register a case in connection with the wedding. 

Pilankatta ward member Abdulla Kunhi K B said it was not a big fat wedding. The ceremony held at the bride’s house at Pilankatta was attended by less than 100 people, he said.“Theirs is a big family with four houses in one compound. 

As many as 30 members are staying in these houses,” said Kunhi. Nine of the 30 have tested positive.Of the 15 guests, who came from the bride’s mother’s house, 12 contracted the infection. “The rest of the infected persons were among the groom’s guests,” said Kunhi, who did not attend the wedding. The groom and the bride’s father returned from Dubai three months ago.

1,049: state records biggest recovery
A total of 1,049 Covid patients recovered on Saturday. This is the first time that the number of recoveries crossed the 1,000-mark in the state. The previous highest was 968 reported on Friday. So far, as many as 8,613 patients have recovered.

roping in ayush experts a challenge  
Plan to bring AYUSH practitioners for treating positive patients at CFLTCs is going to be a challenge for the government. It turned out that respective associations were planning to approach the government with an individual charter of demands. 

Patna, Mar 31: In arguably the first of its kind incident in the country, a young man in Bihar was beaten to death precisely because he had informed the district control room about two corona suspects who had arrived here in the State from Mumbai.

The incident took place in Sitamarhi in North Bihar where a 20-year-old youth Bablu Kumar was allegedly killed by Sudhir Mahto and Munna Mahto.

The two Mahtos had arrived from Mumbai to Sitamarhi around ten days back. Bablu, in the meantime, informed the district control room about the arrival of two persons from a State where a large number of people were afflicted with coronavirus.

A team of doctors on March 24 reached Runnisaidpur in Sitamarhi to examine the two suspects. Three days later, these two persons from Maharashtra tested negative.

But the incident (of informing control room and subsequent medial test) created such enmity between the family of Mahtos and Babloo that on Sunday when they found the 20-year-old young man sitting alone, they thrashed him so mercilessly that he died on the spot.

Shocked and grief-struck, Babloo’s father Vinod Singh eventually lodged an FIR with the police and named Sudhir Mahto, Munna Mahto, and their family members as accused in the killing of his son.

The police on Monday raided the place and arrested the Mahtos.

But then, this is not an isolated case of violence. In another incident that took place in Bihar’s Jehanabad district, a BDO Ajay Kumar and a police officer Chandrashekhar Kumar were attacked by fellow villagers when the officials reached there to quarantine those migrants who had reached there from Delhi. So angry were the villagers with the officials’ move to isolate the migrants that they smashed the window-panes of the government vehicles and attacked the officials.

The officials had to beat a hasty retreat. But they soon returned with additional police team which used brutal force and took local leaders into custody before restoring normalcy in the area.