Morigaon district police trace 158 of those who gave the slip Fourteen of at least 300 passengers who rushed out of a railway station in central Assam two days ago have tested COVID-19 positive, according to officials.
The passengers, many of them returnees from Kerala, got off Vivek Express at Morigaon district’s Jagiroad railway station at around 10.30 a.m. on Sunday. The train had arrived from Kanniyakumari in Tamil Nadu and was bound for Dibrugarh in eastern Assam.
They triggered a scare by skipping the mandatory COVID-19 tests at the railway station and went out during a stampede. Northeast Frontier Railway officials said many more passengers got off at Jagiroad than the 133 who were supposed to according to the reservation chart.
Around 500 passengers flee Assam railway station to avoid Covid test
The police and health officials could hold back only a handful of passengers after they had disembarked from the train.
Children who lost families to Covid are homeless
The Assam Police launched a massive search operation on Sunday to trace around 500 people who fled from the state s Jagiroad railway station, skipping the mandatory Covid test, officials said.
Police and health officials said that around 500 passengers who came from south Indian states, overpowered health officials in the railway station, and fled, creating panic in the area, around 60 km from Guwahati.
Police said that of the around 500 people, including women and children, a majority are migrant workers, and had travelled by the Kanyakumari-Dibrugarh Vivek Express that had started from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and traversed Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal over five days.