BHOPAL: Policing has changed in corona times. The police have adopted innovative measures to teach a lesson to loiterers who are still unaware of the deadly impact of the coronavirus.
A student was stopped by the police in the main market in Mandla town. The police asked him where he was going, but he could not give a convincing reply. And the next moment came instructions from the sub-inspector. “Put this boy in the ambulance with that Covid patient that you were taking to hospital. Then drop him out of town,” instructed the police inspector.
Two men in PPE kits appeared on the scene and started bundling the boy inside the ambulance. The boy resisted. Men in PPE kits dragged him towards the ambulance and almost threw him inside. The boy was making desperate moves to come out of the ambulance while the men in PPE kits kept him stuck at the door. The student then started crying and kept repeating that he would never venture out again. It was only then that he was allowed to go.
Police (dressed in PPE kits) bundle a youth loiterer into an ambulance in Mandla town of Madhya Pradesh on Monday. | FPJ
The men in PPE kits were but policemen and the make-believe corona patient who was lying inside the ambulance, too, was their colleague and was in good health. “This is a difficult situation. We understand that people coming out of their homes aren’t hardened criminals, but they need to be taught about the dreadful virus,” said SP, Mandla, Yashpal Singh Rajput.
A similar video had gone viral on social media during the first wave of corona. In that video from Sidhi district, the policemen were seen giving copies and a pen to youths who had ventured out of their homes unnecessarily and asked them to fill the copy, writing, “I will not go out of home unnecessarily”. Clips of several incidents of making such people do exercise and yoga have also appeared on social media.
