The eerily deserted roads of Gadwal seem straight out of an apocalypse movie. Take a right turn from Erravalli crossroad on the Hyderabad-Bengaluru national highway towards the town and you wouldn’t find even a single civilian on the whole 16-km stretch. Once inside the town, one witnesses the same scene, except for shops that are open for essential services, and police check posts and pickets.
As far as these shops are concerned, they aren’t crowded either. The importance of social distancing has been driven home so effectively by the police here that residents are policing themselves now, even in the absence of khaki .
One can spot people standing two-three feet from each other in neat queues outside shops, while in other urban areas such a scene is witnessed only when the police arrive or the supermarket security refuses entry when people don’t follow social distancing norms.
The situation is much under control now and the credit for that goes to Jogulamba-Gadwal police for having exercised caution since mid-March, when the State started reporting more COVID-19 cases from foreign returnees. They wasted no time in identifying and tracing foreign returnees first, and then Markaz returnees, both enormously demanding tasks. “Cooperation from the public is very important to implement lockdown effectively. Initially, convincing them not to go out, especially to Kurnool, was a difficult task. But, things have streamlined now,” said Superintendent of Police Apoorva Rao.
Police here have seized close to 1,000 vehicles, issued more than 3,000 challans and booked cases against 193 people who flouted lockdown rules. “We are using drones for effective implementation of the lockdown and enforce curfew in all lanes and bylanes of 14 containment zones in the district. Cases are being booked against those who are not following social distancing norms in the red zones,” Ms. Rao told The Hindu .
She said that the district has reported more than 45 positive cases and have tested over 1,000 people so far, a majority of them contacts of Markaz returnees.
Ms. Rao has ‘hand-picked’ people and formed field-level teams, comprising policemen from Special Branch and Task Force to trace, test and quarantine the suspects. “We didn’t face any problem in tracing the suspects and their contacts,” the 2014 batch IPS officer maintained. She ruled out any link to the positive cases reported in the district with neighbouring Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh.
