Bijepur: Ishwar Meher has no travel history nor has he developed any COVID-19 symptoms. Yet, five members of Meher’s family, including his mother, have been placed in home quarantine at Kharmunda village under this block in Bargarh district.
The mystery of them being in quarantine has now been the talk of the town here.
As per sources, Meher works as a harvester driver. Before lockdown, Ishwar had entered into an agreement with a harvester owner in Bhadrak district to drive the latter’s harvester.
Then the lockdown was imposed in the wake of coronavirus outbreak and as a result Ishwar could not make it to Bhadrak.
But taking all by surprise, the owner and another one in a car reached Kharmunda village Tuesday night. After a brief meeting at Ishwar’s house, they took Ishwar with them and went back to Bhadrak.
Ishwar’s family woke up to a problematic Wednesday morning. As the news spread in the village that people from Bhadrak, one of COVID-19 hotspot districts in Odisha, had visited Ishwar’s house, local sarpanch Subasini Danasena reached Ishwar’s house and before anybody could understand what was going to happen.
Sarpanch had Ishwar’s house encircled with thorny branches. She allegedly did so in a bid to disallow them to mix with other villagers. Thus, Ishwar’s mother, his wife and three children were left confined to their house for a day.
Later in the evening, Bijepur block development officer (BDO) Padmanabha Samantaray was informed about the incident after a video of their predicament went viral.
However, BDO Samantray asked the family members to be in home quarantine for 14 days starting Thursday. He promised them that the administration would provide all facilities including rations to them during the quarantine period.
For drinking water and other purposes, the administration has provided them with a tanker, it was learnt.
However, mystery among some villagers — how a man from Bhadrak district could visit Bargarh district with lockdown restrictions in place and there are policemen at every half kilometre checking all vehicles — is still unsolved.
PNN