帰郷目指したインドの村人、死んだふりで封鎖かいくぐろうとし逮捕

【スリナガルＡＦＰ＝時事】新型コロナウイルス感染症（COVID-19）の拡大を抑制するため、全土が封鎖下に置かれているインドで、何とかして帰郷しようとした70歳の村人が他の男らとともに、死んだふりをして救急車に乗り込み、封鎖をかいくぐろうとしていたことが分かった。地元警察が1日、明らかにした。（写真は資料写真）
　警察によれば、ハキム・ディンという名前の男は、カシミール地方のジャムにある病院で、頭部の軽いけがの治療を受けていたところ、救急車の運転手に死んだふりをすれば検問所を通過できると提案された。
　ディン容疑者ら男４人は、パキスタンとの事実上の国境に近いインド支配地域のへき地プーンチに帰りたかったという。
　ＡＦＰの取材に応じた同地域の警察本部長によれば、４人は救急車で１６０キロ以上走行し、病院から発行された偽の死亡診断書を使って数多くの検問所を通過。
　だが、「救急車は家にたどり着く前にある最後の検問所で止められた」とし、「そこにいた警官が、救急車の中で覆いを掛けられて横たわっている男は死んでいるはずがないとすぐに見抜いた」という。
　同本部長によれば、男らは逮捕されて別々に隔離されている。「不正を働いて政府の禁止命令に違反した」罪に問われる可能性があるという。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/04/06-13:26）

A Kashmiri villager faked his death and travelled more than a hundred miles in an ambulance with four others in a desperate bid to circumvent India's virus lockdown and return home, police said Wednesday.
Hakim Din was being treated for a minor head injury at a hospital in Jammu when an ambulance driver suggested the 70-year-old fake his death to get past checkpoints, police said.
Din and three other men wanted to return to Poonch, a far-flung region in Indian-administered Kashmir close to the de facto border with Pakistan.
The region's Superintendent of Police, Ramesh Angral, said the four men and the driver travelled more than 160 kilometres (100 miles) in the ambulance, passing many checkpoints using a fake death certificate from the hospital.
The ambulance was stopped at the last checkpoint before they could reach home, Angral told AFP.
A policeman there immediately figured out that the man lying covered inside the ambulance could not be dead.
The men were arrested and quarantined separately, Angral said, adding that they faced charges of cheating and defying the government's prohibitory orders.
There are no known coronavirus cases in the Poonch region.
India imposed a 21-day nationwide lockdown from last Wednesday to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
There are more than 1,600 cases, including 38 deaths, in the vast nation of 1.3 billion people, according to the government.
The nationwide lockdown comes in the wake of a long-running curfew in Kashmir, imposed as New Delhi scrapped the restive region's semi-autonomous status on August 5.
Some aspects of the curfew were gradually eased in the following months, allowing Kashmiris to travel outside their homes and villages.
But some Kashmiris have been left stranded in cities and unable to return home to their villages after the sudden nationwide lockdown announcement.
Internet access, which was cut in the earlier lockdown, has remained severely restricted with only 2G access.
Many mobile phone users have also been unable to access the internet on their devices.