Meerut: 9 suspects go missing; 8 found, 1 still untraceable

Nine COVID-19 suspects went missing from a quarantine centre of Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Medical College and Hospital while they were shifted to another quarantine centre on Tuesday night.

Nine COVID-19 suspects went missing from a quarantine centre of Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Medical College and Hospital while they were shifted to another quarantine centre on Tuesday night.

While eight of them were found and brought back to the quarantine centre, one person is yet to be traced, said the police.

The hospital authorities, meanwhile, maintain that all of them had tested negative and hence were being shifted to Subharti quarantine centre.

“On Tuesday around 9 pm, nine people went missing while being shifted to another quarantine centre in Subharti hospital. We were informed about the incident at midnight and soon the search was launched,” said Akhilesh Narayan Singh, SP City.

“While one suspect was found in the quarantine centre of LLRM hospital, another one was found in the quarantine centre of Subharti hospital. When the police called remaining seven suspects on their mobile numbers, six of them said they are at their residences. They said that after testing negative they assumed that now they can go to their homes and hence didn’t care to take permission from authorities,” said the SP City.

He said the six suspects who went to their homes were asked to return to government’s quarantine centre and were back.

Address and mobile number found in hospital records of one of the suspects, who is still missing, were found invalid and the search operation is not over yet, said police.

RC Gupta, principal, LLRM hospital said, “In the quarantine centre at our hospital we keep patients only who are corona positive. Those who test negative are sent to 14-day isolation at Subharti hospital.”