The police here have stepped up vigil against vehicles crossing the borders of the neighbouring districts of Kottayam and Kollam that recently witnessed a spurt in the number of COVID-19 cases. District Police Chief (DPC) K.G. Simon told The Hindu that the police had decided to temporarily close certain roads in the district leading to the neighbouring Kollam and Kottayam districts, as part of the ongoing intensive COVID-19 prevention drive.
36 points
He said the police had identified 36 points on the borders of the two neighbouring districts, and check posts would be set up at these places for intensified surveillance in the wake of the growing number of COVID-19 cases in Kollam and Kottayam.
Traffic has been banned on the highway cutting across Kadambanad grama panchayat in Adoor taluk to enter Poruvazhy in Kollam where a new COVID-19 case was reported on Saturday. The police have even made public announcements in the panchayat limits on Sunday, calling upon the people to avoid unnecessary travel to Poruvazhy and not to purchase fish, vegetables, etc, from small-scale vendors coming from Chakkuvally and surrounding areas in Poruvazhy panchayat.
The police also closed roads at Palathinkadavu, 7th Mile, Chathakulam, etc, where the two districts share boundaries. They had erected barricades, blocking vehicular traffic on the road near Paipad on the borders of Kottayam and Pathanamthitta, Mr Simon said.
Drop in crime rate
The DPC said the lockdown-imposed restrictions on people’s movement brought down the crime rate drastically in the district.
As per the data prepared by the District Crime Records Bureau, crimes like murder, theft, sexual assault, crime against women, and road accidents came down in the first 30 days of lockdown in the district.
Mr Simon said only 26 road accident cases were registered in the district during the one-month lockdown period against the 331 cases registered in the preceding month. No case of atrocity against women or sexual abuse of children (POCSO) were reported in the district during the lockdown period. Similarly, the number of murder cases in the district too had come down to just one during the first 30 days of lockdown, he said.
Only two burglary cases had been registered during the period against 20 such cases registered in the previous month.
Murder cases down
Though the police registered 14 cases for murder attempts in various police station limits in the month preceding the lockdown, no such case had been registered in the first 30 days of the lockdown, the DPC said.
However, Mr Simon said the police had registered a total of 10,107 cases for violation of lockdown norms in different parts of the district.
