Rich exempted from institutional quarantine: Nagaland tribal body

Nagaland’s Chief Secretary Temjen Toy said the government was unaware of such cases

A man receives change from a shop handed over in a basket in Kohima, Nagaland. File

A tribal body in Nagaland has claimed that the rich and influential returnees were being exempted from the mandatory quarantine for COVID-19.

The Northern Angami Youth Organisation in Kohima district said the State authorities let many such people, who returned from various parts of the country, avoid the 14-day quarantine at government facilities.

Angami is one of the 16 major tribes of Nagaland.

“Such preferential treatment conveys a biased outlook,” the organisation’s president Roko Angami said, reminding the government that the rules pertaining to COVID-19 apply to all citizens irrespective of their social or financial status.

The State’s Chief Secretary Temjen Toy said the government was unaware of such cases. “There are no reports but I will look into the allegations,” he said.

The organisation has asked members of the community to not allow anyone to enter the villages in the Angami areas for home quarantine if they had not undergone institutional quarantine.

Nagaland and large swathes of the northeastern region, fairly untouched by COVID-19, have been apprehensive about infection through the returnees from red zones elsewhere in the country, unless they are undergo a medical examination and are quarantined.

Nagaland has not recorded any positive case, but a man from the State tested positive at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital after being referred by a private hospital in Dimapur in April.