Madhya Pradesh: Bounty for info on people sneaking into zero-COVID-19 district

In perhaps the first such anti-coronavirus action in the country, a young IPS officer in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh has announced a bounty for information on people sneaking into his region from Indore and Bhopal. While Indore and Bhopal have been placed in the ‘red zone’, tribal-dominated Bhind – about 500-600km from these big cities, is a green zone with no COVID-19 case since the lockdown. Bhind SP Nagendra Singh wants to keep it that way. On Wednesday, the 2014 batch IPS officer released a video saying that anyone giving information about a person who enters Bhind illegally from red-zone districts will be given Rs 500. The message went viral, and police received around 50 calls right away. He said, 'We have started this incentive scheme to identify people who, for fear of law, are not coming out for checkup. It is important to identify and stop such a movement for the lockdown to succeed. Hopefully, it will yield positive results for us.'