25,000 in quarantine under watch, 247 booked in Delhi

Besides, the police have also filed 81 FIRs after physical checks at houses of the people under home-quarantine.

The Delhi Police, using mobile phone surveillance, have filed 160 first information reports (FIRs) against people in home-quarantine for violating lockdown orders, officials said on Monday. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that the mobile phones of 25,000 people in home-quarantine would be monitored.

An empty stretch along NH 48 near IFFCO Chowk, on day thirteen of the 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, in Gurugram. (Sanjeev Verma/ Hindustan Times)

Besides, the police have also filed 81 FIRs after physical checks at houses of the people under home-quarantine. Six more persons were booked on the complaints of their neighbours, the police said in a statement, taking the total number of those booked till Monday evening to 24x7.

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Most of them are being booked under the Epidemic Diseases Act and sections 188 (Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 269 (Negligent act likely to spread infection of disease danger­ous to life), and 270 (Malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). First-time offenders or those who inadvertently stepped out of their houses are being booked only under Section 188 of the IPC, the police said.

“People who are deliberately and frequently breaking the home-quarantine rule are charged with all the three sections of the IPC, as the maximum punishment they would be getting is up to two years of imprisonment, or fine, or both. Those found breaking the rule for the first time or unintentionally are booked only under Section 188 of IPC and given a warning that harsher sections would be slapped if they are caught violating the order again,” said a police officer, who did not want to be named.

How the enforcement is being done

The police are primarily using geofencing technology to identify the quarantined persons venturing out of their residences. “Since we know the address of the persons in home-quarantine, their house is considered the static location. We use software to carry out geofencing of their smartphones. If the person leaves the geofencing area, there is a change in their phone’s tower location and we receive an alert,” a senior police officer said.

Each police district has formed a dedicated team, comprising personnel having technical expertise and those who carry out physical checks. “The phone numbers of all the home-quarantined people have been uploaded on the software that tracks the movement,” the officer said.

“Any breach of the geofence is communicated to the police station staff concerned. The police then visit the quarantined person’s house and confront him/her with the technical data. If a satisfactory reason is not given, an FIR is registered. The person will be arrested and granted bail,” said the officer, adding that all the sections of the IPC are bailable.

Officers said that they are also conducting surprise checks to ensure that those under home-quarantine don’t dodge the police by leaving their phones at home. The police are also scanning the CCTV cameras of the neighbourhood to track the violators, said Dinesh Kumar Gupta, deputy commissioner of police (Shahdara).

The Delhi government has shared names, phone numbers and residential addresses of more than 25,000 citizens of Delhi who have been put under home-quarantine, to avoid the spread of Sars-Cov-2 virus, which causes Covid-19. A majority of them are people who have foreign travel history, senior police officers said.

Delhi Police spokesperson, Mandeep Singh Randhawa, said that the number of FIRs will continue to increase. “Our police personnel are regularly conducting house visits and those found absent are being booked,” said Randhawa.

The decision to use phones for tracking people in home-quarantine was taken in a meeting between Kejriwal and Lieutenant Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal almost a week ago.

The use of phone location to track a person in quarantine started in China, and was quickly adopted in Singapore and European countries. To ensure that people who are ordered to stay in isolation do not move out, health departments and the police had initially started pasting notices outside their houses and encouraged neighbours to report violations.