Corona scare strikes heart of Bengal govt, Didi is livid

■ Top officer helps ‘positive’ son flout norms

The coronavirus scare has hit the heart of the Mamata Banerjee government — Nabanna, the state secretariat — as West Bengal home secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay went under “home isolation” along with his wife Sonali Chakrabarti Bandopadhyay, who is also vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, from Wednesday within two days of his meeting with the bureaucrat mother of the state’s first Covid-19 patient who had taken her son to the secretariat

◗ The Oxford University student was found to be deliberately ignoring advisories to get quarantined at a hospital by using his mother’s influence

instead of admitting him to a hospital.

At least 10 more government employees, who were around them, are also in isolation at home. The development came a day after the Covid-19 virus was confirmed in the teenaged boy after his return from the UK. He came into contact with three Covid-19 patients at a birthday party in London. In a startling revelation, the Oxford University student was found to be deliberately ignoring advisories to get quarantined at a hospital by using his mother’s influence.

Furious over his and his mother’s callousness, chief minister Mamata Banerjee cautioned: “There is no space for the VIP or LIP. The rules to be followed in my home

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and yours are the same. Nothing can be more

callous than roaming around with symptoms like an irresponsible person which can infect others also. I do not support if someone with symptoms does not undergo any test just because of having an influential member in the family.”

Landing at the Kolkata Airport on March 15, the 18-year-old boy, whose father is a doctor, skipped the “thermal screening” for Covid-19, giving the reference of his mother, a West Bengal Civil Service (Executive) officer posted as a special secretary in the state home and hill affairs department at Nabanna, which also houses the chief minister’s office. He was then advised to visit the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Beliaghata for tests, but he did not, sources said.

The teenager returned in his family car to his home at an upscale highrise apartment in Jadavpur off the Eastern Bypass. Alerted by airport officials, the state health department contacted his mother and strongly recommended that she take her son to a hospital.

On March 16 morning, the woman bureaucrat took her son to M.R. Bangur Hospital, where he was examined in the deputy superintendent’s office and was asked to take admission at the ID Hospital.

But, instead, his mother took her son in her office car to Nabanna, where she attended a meeting with Mr Bandopadhyay, besides working in her chamber, the sources added. On the same day the chief minister also chaired a high-level review meeting on Covid19 with Mr Bandopadhyay and other senior officials at Nabanna. In the evening, the boy visited a shopping mall and a club at Park Street.

He is now being kept at a separate ward in isolation at the ID Hospital, where his parents and two drivers are also in isolation. Nabanna has, meanwhile, been totally santised.