Tracing the Nanded cluster trail
OUTBREAK 1,253 pilgrims who visited a gurdwara in Maharashtra contracted the virus, but authorities in two states are unsure how
nCHANDIGARH/MUMBAI/NEWDELHI:IN the span of four days, Hardeep Singh Kahlon’s life turned upside down.
The 38-year-old bus driver was hailed as a hero in his village in Punjab’s Shahid Bhagat Singh Nagar district when he ferried back 40-odd stranded Sikh pilgrims from Maharashtra’s Nanded town on April 29.
But in four days, the celebration turned into suspicion as hundreds of pilgrims across the state started testing positive for the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19.
Local village residents started avoiding his family and Kahlon, along with two other drives who accompanied him on the bus, were whisked away to a quarantine centre where it was confirmed they had contracted the disease.
As he remained shuttered from the world, a fog of rumours and allegations descended on his family and relatives.
The drivers were accused of being carriers of the virus, helping passengers evade screening and allowing people other than pilgrims to enter the buses; politicians discussed their role in Punjab’s largest Covid-19 cluster that accounts for two-thirds of the state’s 1,946 cases. But Kahlon betrayed little bitterness as he walked out of the quarantine centre on Saturday.
“It was our duty to bring our own people who were stranded and even though there was a risk to life, you can’t run away from a fight,” he said.
Based on interviews with 30-odd government officials, doctors, pilgrims, gurdwara management officers and pilgrims, HT recreated the circumstances that led to the rescue of thousands of pilgrims across India in a fleet of buses and the unlikely emergence of the cluster across two states despite near-hourly surveillance by multiple officials
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown on March 25, most pilgrims had left for their home states but roughly 4,500 people were still in the complex.
Of this, 4,125 people were from Punjab and the rest were from Jammu, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Rajasthan. At least 200 of them continue to stay in the pilgrim quarters even now, said Master Singh, a sevadar.
Among the pilgrims was Daya Singh, a 57-year-old farmer from Sursingh village of Punjab’s Tarantaran district, accompanied 60 of his friends and family. Narinder Singh, a 60-year-old resident of Khemkaran village in Punjab’s Tarantaran district, came by himself. Gurwinder Singh, a 38-year-old soldier from Chajjal Wadi village in Amrisar district guided 10 members of his family for the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage. All stayed in the complex at langar sahib.
The gurdwara management arranged for doctors to do daily checks of the pilgrims and started negotiating with the local government for the passage of the stranded pilgrims. But negotiations were stalled quickly.
The gurdwara board approached the district administration, which got in touch with the state government. Simultaneously, the Punjab government wrote to the Maharashtra government for permissions. Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal also appealed to the government for special arrangements to evacuate the pilgrims.
“Two special trains were demanded for their passage, but permission was not given. Finally, the permission came on April 21-22 for the evacuation by road,” said a senior official from the Nanded district administration on condition of anonymity.
By then, many pilgrims had already grown restless. Daya Singh, for example, convinced some of his family to take a taxi arranged by the gurdwara.
“We were stopped at many places and somehow reached Tarantaran on April 15, after a week,” he said. Ordinarily, the journey should have taken three days. Daya Singh was one of 300 pilgrims who returned to Punjab that day – the first tranche of pilgrims to come back. None of them was tested on arrival, and they were sent to home quaratine.
Within hours, chief minister Amarinder Singh and Harsimrat Kaur Badal had exchanged barbs with the ruling Congress and the opposition Shiromani Akali Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party blaming each other for the delay in evacuating the pilgrims.
On April 13, Narinder Singh decided it was too dangerous to stay back in Nanded and arranged for a vehicle to take him back, along with 12 other pilgrims. His other motivation for going back: the harvest season had begun and he was already getting several calls a day from his family to come back and oversee the cutting of crop.
It took him nine days to return home, and they, too, were stopped at several barricades. “Many a times we got only single meal as dhabas were closed. We paid Rs 1 lakh to the tempo for the journey,” said the 60-year-old man.
By the time Narinder Singh got back home – on April 22 – negotiations between the Punjab and Maharashtra government to send buses for evacuating the pilgrims were almost closed.
With the arrival of the buses on April 24, the third and most important leg of the pilgrim evacuation began. Gurwinder Singh and his family were among the passengers on the first few buses.
The soldier claimed no one in his family slept for the three days on the road. “The bus only stopped when people need to go washroom. We even got our langar, made by the gurdwaras on the way, inside our buses and we were not allowed to step out.”
They reached their home in Amritsar district late on April 27 but bad news was waiting for them. Five pilgrims in Tarantaran district’s Sursingh village – the native place of Daya Singh – had tested positive earlier that day, sounding an alarm throughout the state. By the next day, Daya Singh, Narinder Singh and Gurwinder Singh had all tested positive for the virus. As of Saturday, 1253 pilgrims have tested positive for the virus and one
–56-year old Gurjant Singh from Ludhiana district – has died.
How did so many pilgrims get infected without the authorities finding out until it was too late? There are three theories.
The first is that the pilgrims contracted the virus during their month-long stay at the gurdwara. Maharashtra and the gurdwara management deny this. “Not a single person had any symptoms of virus till last day of the departure of the last batch on April 27. We were conducting regular check-ups as per the guidelines of the central government,” said Ravinder Singh Bumgai, the secretary of the gurdwara board.
But Nanded municipal corporation health officer Suresh Singh Bisen confirmed to HT that the authorities conducted only thermal screening. Given that about 90% of the Covid-19 positive pilgrims are asymptomatic, it is possible they contracted the infection without fever. “We did it continuously for five days. No complaint. We didn’t find anything,” Bisen said.
The second theory is that the pilgrims were infected during the journey.
The 79 buses came in two varieties – with 40 seats and 31 seats – but they were all airconditioned. The passengers sat close to each other, and the AC – which research has shown can be a carrier of the virus – was on the whole time.
The route crossed several red zones and at many places, Sikh volunteers organised ‘langars’. One such spot was Indore city, which has reported more than 2,200 cases.
Some pilgrims also alleged that in a limited number of buses, outsiders were allowed to board. According to gurdwara management member, around 150-200 labourers joined the pilgrims when they got to know that the Centre had allowed buses to evacuate them. “The labourers joined the pilgrims and came back using vehicles arranged by the government. However, these labourers were not checked even using thermal scanners,” a 42-year old pilgrim from Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district claimed.
The third, and somewhat less plausible, theory is that some of the drivers had been unknowingly infected before they drove their buses down to Maharashtra. This theory has taken hold in Punjab in the past two weeks after a 45-year-old driver tested positive for the virus.
NK Aggarwal, the Fatehgarh Sahib civil surgeon, said the driver went to Nanded from Fatehgarh Sahib on April 24 and came back on April 28. He tested positive on May 1, but when authorities tested his family – his nephew and niece were also found positive.
“Because the viral load takes five to six days to return a positive test, we suspect that he may have been Covid positive before he went to Nanded,” said Aggarwal.
Maharashtra public works department minister and guardian minister of Nanded, Ashok Chavan, said the infection was spread through the drivers and cleaners of the buses. “Had gurdwara staff been infected earlier [as claimed by the Punjab authorities], the virus could have spread across the city much before the pilgrims were evacuated,” he said.