70-Year-Old Man Faked His Death To Return Home Amid India Lockdown

70-year-old Hakim Din is being treated for a minor head injury at a hospital in Jammu city when the government ordered the India lockdown. An ambulance driver at the hospital suggested Din and three other men to fake their deaths to bypass the checkpoints and get home.

The group wants to return home in Poonch, a remote area in Kashmir, near the border with Pakistan. They traveled more than 160 kilometers on an ambulance, passing many checkpoints using fake death certificates.

However, their plans were discovered at the last minute. There was only one more checkpoint they needed to get past to reach home, but a policeman there "immediately figured out that the man lying covered inside the ambulance could not be dead,” said Ramesh Angral, regional police representative.

The men were then isolated on their own and could face charges of cheating and violating the government’s prohibitory orders. 

Mr. Din is just one of thousands of people in India in a dilemma when a nationwide lockdown was unexpectedly issued. Tens of millions of migrant workers do not have time to prepare to go home. They were trapped in cities, many of whom had to walk hundreds of kilometers to go home.

India has begun implementing the world's largest lockdown order, which lasted 21 days, in an effort to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in a nation of 1.3 billion people.

Most companies and shops are not closed and people are asked not to go out unless to buy food or medicine. Planes, trains, long-distance buses, taxis - all stopped working.

As of April 4, India records 2,547 COVID-19 cases, 62 deaths, and 163 recovers.

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