Agartala: Refuting the allegation of being the carrier of COVID-19 within the battalion, BSF Tripura Frontier Inspector General (IG) Solomon Yash Kumar Minz pointed finger at the civilians as the source of infection after 86 of their jawans were found positive.
There have been allegations that BSF jawans were acting as carriers of Coronavirus because of their suspected contact with Bangladeshis nationals in eastern border of Bangladesh while on duty in the porous stretches along with Chittagong hill-tracts. Allegedly, the tribal villagers of bordering locations have instances of cross border movement, which made border guards susceptible to such infections.
However, BSF IG Solomon said, “This apprehension is incorrect as our jawans are careful about contacts and never do such things. Moreover, very few jawans returned to the camp of 138 battalion located at Jawaharnagar in Dhalai district during the lockdown period; the very few who had come were put under 14-day of institutional quarantine before joining duties, as per directives from our headquarters.”He conceded that some jawans had gone to markets with permission which the authority did not hold back and this might have led to their being infected. “What the state government can do without delay is a much larger community tracing in Dhalai, especially in villages around the BSF camps to ascertain the reasons for infections; we are conducting our own inquiries; civilians may also have been infected asymptomatically without knowing it and community tracing will help identify actual patients and reasons for their infection soon,” he said while adding, “We are investigating the source of infection and extensive testing of swab samples of the people living on the campus has been going on.” (UNI)
