Cops in PPE on guard outside Covid wards

NEW DELHI: Outside a room in the Covid-19 wing at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), four police personnel wearing PPE suits stand on guard round-the-clock. Unlike other Covid-19 patients, who are lodged in wards and share space with others, underworld gangster Chhota Rajan alias Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, 62, is lodged in a single room because of the threat to his life. Since April 24, when he was shifted from Tihar jail number 2 to AIIMS, the police’s quick reaction team (QRT) has also been posted at the AIIMS campus along with many others in plain clothes to keep an eye on suspicious movement in the facility.

In East Delhi’s Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, where at least 14 Covid-19 prisoners are lodged, police and hospital authorities have dedicated one of the building gates only to the entry and exit of those going to the prisoners’ ward. This is where one of Delhi’s top gangsters, Gaurav Jhareda, was lodged until Thursday along with at least 13 other Covid prisoners. Jhareda died of the infection on Thursday night. The entry to the building where the prisoner-patients are lodged is sealed by police barricades. Private security guards and Delhi police personnel monitor every suspicious movement.

As cases of Covid-19 continue to spread rapidly inside Delhi’s Tihar jail, prompting the jail administration to shift some prisoners to hospitals outside, many hospitals across the city have turned into high-security zones, with police personnel in some cases donning PPE kits to guard them inside Covid wards.