COVID-19: Delhi Containment Zone Residents Attack Police, Volunteers

NEW DELHI: Following an argument with the police over the removal of barricades, a group of residents in Delhi's coronavirus containment zone attacked police and civil volunteers near Naraina area on Sunday, June 21.

According to reports, the police and the civil volunteers had gone to Naraina area in Delhi to distribute food and other essentials to people, but some residents in the area demanded the police to remove the barricades that were kept to control the public movement in the containment zone.

Police disagreed to their demand as the situation will go out of control if the public movement is not prohibited through barricades in the containment zones.

An argument between police and residents turned into violence. Following this, residents attacked police and some people suffered minor injuries during this violence.

The Delhi government has declared the WZ block of the area as a containment zone after it had reported 10 COVID-19 cases.

This is not the first time that police and frontline workers have faced hostilities from the people. There were several reports of people attacking doctors, police and other health staff.

In March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described all the frontline workers as "incarnations of God" and warned of stern action against those who harassed them.

On the other hand, Delhi is one of the worst affected states by COVID-19, and it continues to maintain a worrisome trend with the highest positive cases being reported each day. Delhi reported 59,746 COVID-19 cases till date. The death toll due to coronavirus reached 2,175. On Sunday, the national capital had reported 3,000 cases.

As a part of unlock 1.0, earlier this month the central government had announced several lockdown restrictions across the country, including the opening of public places like shopping malls, restaurants and even places of worship with a set of precautionary measures.

However, the centre doesn't ease any lockdown restrictions in containment zones where the spread of the virus is much high. As a result, the people living in these zones were restricted to their homes except for emergency services or essentials.