Women take out religious procession to 'thank God' for saving them from Covid-19, 23 booked

After the video went viral on Wednesday, Ahmedabad rural police said appropriate action had already been taken

At least two dozen men and women, including the village sarpanch, were arrested for holding religious processions in large numbers to "thank" their deity for "protecting from the coronavirus" in two separate FIRs Ahmedabad district police registered on May 3 and May 4. They were booked for breaching the social distancing guidelines and illegal assembly, disaster management act and the epidemic diseases act.

The FIRs stated that the cases were registered after video footage of the religious processions and "jalabhishek" ceremony with DJs at the temples went viral. In the gathering, hundreds of women, carrying water pots on their heads, marched to the temples of their community's deity in Navapura under Changodar police station and in Nidhrad village under Sanand police station area. In both the case, a total of 23 persons have been booked. According to police, the persons from a particular community had taken out the procession in order to thank the god for "protecting them from coronavirus infection" for the fifteen days.

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"The events were organised in belief that the deity of this particular community had protected them from the covid-19 infection for the last fifteen days and hence women and men took out the procession to offer jalabhishek ritual, breaching all the guidelines of social distancing and illegal assembly. We registered the FIRs and arrested over two dozen people involved in the events that included village sarpanch," Ahmedabad rural Superintendent of Police Virendra Singh Yadav told DH.

He added that for the past two days, the police have been holding meetings with village heads for counselling them not to take out such events. All the accused have been booked for violating police notification regarding public gatherings under section-188 of the Indian Penal Code, disaster management act and epidemic diseases act.

Only a day before, the Gujarat government extended night curfew, from 8 PM to 6 AM, to seven more cities - Deesa, Ankaleshwar, Vapi, Modasa, Radhanpur, Kadi and Visnagar-in the state to stop the spread of Covid-19 infection. With this, a total of 36 cities are under restrictions. On Tuesday, state recorded over 13,050 new cases and 131 deaths, taking the total cases to 6,20,472 and death toll to 7,779.