Bengaluru: The Padarayanapura violence that occurred three days ago has now snowballed into a political issue, with five of the arrested, who were lodged in Ramanagar district jail, testing positive for COVID-19.
Interestingly, Ramanagar had remained a green zone so far and the district has no BJP representation either in Assembly or even at local administrations, while local people were up against shifting them to Ramanagar prisons.
After arresting over 128 people in connection with Padarayanapura incident, where locals attacked medical and police officers who came to take 58 primary contacts of a COVID-19 positive person, they were shifted to neighbouring Ramanagar prisons.
Both former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy and KPCC President D K Shivakumar hail from Ramanagar district and they opposed the government move to shift these arrested persons to Ramanagar prisons.
While Kumaraswamy warned agitation if Padarayanapura prisoners were not moved away from the district, local people, amidst prohibitory orders, staged a protest in front of the prison.
When five of them were tested positive, D K Shivakumar charged that the government was deliberately making Ramanagar a COVID-19 area, which had not received even a single positive case.
Ramanagar which was in the green zone with zero positive cases is on high alert now. The entire prison is quarantined and all the prison officials, staff and police on duty are now screened for Corona.
The five positive cases are shifted to Victoria Hospital in Bangalore and the remaining who were arrested in the Padarayanapura case are getting shifted to Haj Bhavan and will be quarantined.
Meanwhile, eighteen fresh Corona positive cases are reported since Thursday evening with 11 cases from Bangalore alone.
Of the 11, five cases (who were arrested for violence against the healthcare workers) were contacts of the positive patient from Padarayanapura and another five have been infected from the migrant labour-P419, a resident of Hongasandra slum.
Two cases are reported from Belagavi and Bagalkot, one each from Chikkaballapura, Vijayapura and Tumkur, as per the Friday mid-day health bulletin issued by the Department of Health and Family Welfare. Total cases from state stand at 463 with 18 deaths.
