NE NEWS SERVICE
AGARTALA, APRIL 21
A family from Gomati district of Tripura, stranded in Chennai due to lockdown, has travelled 3,213 km in an ambulance to return home amid the restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Chanchal Majumder along with his wife Ashima, who had gone to Chennai for treatment in a private hospital there, reached home on Sunday evening, immediately they were sent to a quarantine centre, a district official said
The couple hailing from Udaipur town rushed back home in the midst of the lockdown as their daughter’s marriage is slated to be held on May 8.
“We visited Apollo hospital, where my wife had undergone an operation. When she was supposed to be discharged from the facility, the lockdown was announced and it was very expensive to stay there.
“Besides, marriage of our daughter is fixed on May 8, so we had to hire the ambulance during the lockdown to return home,” Majumder, a retired deputy director of sports and youth affairs department, told reporters on Monday.
During their long journey, the couple had faced an ordeal to furnish documents of the hospital in different check points of Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura, he said.
“We booked the ambulance from the hospital. One more patient from Tripura was with us in the ambulance with an attendant and a relative,” Majumder said.
They were quarantined at a centre in Udaipur immediately after they returned to home, said Gomati district magistrate Tarun Kanti Debnath.
“As they crossed through several states and high risk zones, we have shifted them to a quarantine centre. They did not meet their daughter or any other relatives after they returned home,” the magistrate said.
There were two COVID-19 cases have been reported in Tripura so far, and one has already recovered from the disease while the other is undergoing treatment in a hospital in Agartala.
