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Bengaluru, Jun 30: To instill confidence among its commuters, the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has decided to put stamp on hand of all passengers before they are allowed to board the buses.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, The decision was taken in the wake of a sudden jump in the number of COVID-19 cases reported from Bengaluru.

The round stamp is, however, different from 'home-quarantine' stamp applied to infected and they were not allowed to travel. Officials said that the measure is aimed at reassuring passengers that those travelling with them do not have symptoms. The left hand will be stamped with an ink which can be washed away by the time they reach home.

Karnataka on Saturday reported 12 new cases, the highest in a single day so far, taking the tally in the state to 76.

Late at night, the Mysuru district commissioner said five more people had tested positive in the district. But it was yet to be confirmed by the state health department.

Of the cases, 41 are from Bengaluru, eight from Chikkaballapur, while Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts have seven each.

Interestingly, the highest number of patients are those from Dubai or those who had transit travel via Dubai. Out of 76 cases, 17 cases (22%) have travel history to Dubai, the capital of Emirate of Dubai and the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar, who is also in-charge of COVID-19 operations, said that Dubai has been a major concern as far as Karnataka COVID-19 patients are concerned. “Most of the positive cases have come through Dubai suggesting something amiss there,” he said. 

Echoing the same, Dr Prakash Kumar, Joint Director, Communicable Diseases, Department of Health and Family Welfare, said, “The layover in Dubai is around six to seven hours. We are seeing Dubai to be the new epicentre of the virus as far as India is concerned.”

UAE was initially not on the list of countries from where passengers were screened. It was added much later when clusters of patients with travel history to Dubai began popping up all over the country.

Patient-19 has infected the maximum so far.

Out of the 12 cases that tested positive on Saturday, five are contacts of Patient 19. All of them are being treated at a Chikkaballapur hospital. Two of them are from Hindupur, Andhra Pradesh, and three are residents of Gauribidanur taluk in Chikkabalapur district.

P19, a 31-year-old man from Chikkaballapur, had travelled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and returned to India on March 14. Existing patient clusters suggest that P19 had infected the maximum number of people. Officials did not reveal how many people he originally travelled with to Mecca.

Amid the rise in cases, Jawaid Akhtar, Additional Chief Secretary (Health), maintained that the state had not reached stage 3. But he had no definitive answer as to how the Mysuru patient contracted the virus despite health officials he was in touch with not testing positive.

Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said around 1,000 primary contacts of all positive cases have been classified as high-risk and low-risk. The high-risk patients are in government hospitals while the low-risk ones in quarantine facilities.

Udupi, Jun 24: Nearly four years after he was arrested in the murder case of NRI entrepreneur Bhaskar Shetty, the District Sessions court has granted conditional interim bail to Niranjan Bhat, one of the three prime accused in the case.

The development comes two days after the death of Niranjan’s father Srinivas Bhat(65). Though Srinivas and his driver Raghavendra were also arrested in the case on the accusation of destruction of evidence, they were released within a month.

Through his lawyer Niranjan had appealed to the court seeking bail to perform his father’s post-death rituals. 

After hearing the arguments, the court granted conditional interim bail till July 7 on furnishing a bond of Rs 5 lakh. The judge directed the accused to report to the court on or before July 7 to be taken into judicial custody.

Bhaskar Shetty, who owned a chain of supermarkets in Saudi Arabia, went missing from his house in Udupi on 28 July 2016. His mother Gulabi Shetty lodged a missing person complaint on July 29. The police arrested his wife Rajeshwari, her son Navaneeth and astrologer Niranjan Bhat on the charge of murdering Bhaskar Shetty and destroying the evidence, in Udupi on August 7, 2016. Rajeshwari is already out on bail. Navneet is still in prison.

Shetty was murdered at his house in Indrali and later his body was taken to Belman. It is alleged Niranjan Bhat had put the body of deceased Bhaskar Shetty in the pit used for Homa rituals and burnt it.