COVID-19 Informer: Police officer's hand cut off with sword while enforcing lockdown

Police officer's hand cut off with sword while enforcing lockdown.

The officer in India, and six colleagues, stopped a car with seven people inside near a vegetable market and asked for their travel passes. Armed men in the blue robes of the Nihang warrior sect emerged from the vehicle and attacked.

Punjab Police's assistant sub-inspector Harjeet Singh's hand was, the Hindustan Times reported, "re-implanted in a seven-hour long operation". At the time Mr Singh was armed only with a lathi or wooden stick.

Meanwhile, in a scene reminiscent of The Simpsons, ten foreigners who broke a coronavirus lockdown in an Indian town made famous by the Beatles, were forced to repent by writing "I am so sorry" 500 times.

The travellers - reportedly from Israel, Mexico, Australia and Austria - were caught taking a walk in Rishikesh, where the Beatles sought spirituality at an Ashram in 1968.

Considering some police have been filmed beating miscreants it is undoubtedly the better option.

On the numbers front, deaths related to the coronavirus passed 20,000 in Italy (though there is evidence of the curve being flattened); New York's coronavirus fatalities topped 10,000 only about a month after the US state recorded its first fatality; and deaths in the UK surged past 11,000.

US deaths from the coronavirus have topped 25,000, doubling in one week, while a power play over exactly who has primary constitutional responsibility for ensuring public safety in their states - President Trump or the individual governors - has prompted talk of "mutiny".

There's been a slight relaxation of lockdown laws in Spain and Austria, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to return to work.

In Italy the lockdown largely remains in place, but some bookshops and clothes stores will begin opening today.

French president Emmanuel Macron announced the country will remain in its current lockdown state until May 11.

The Czech government will gradually reopen stores and restaurants from April 20, although people will continue to be required to wear masks.

India extended its lockdown until May 3 as the number of coronavirus cases crossed 10,000. Pakistan and Nepal also extended their restrictions.

And all this while the World Health Organisation advised extreme caution in easing strict measures.

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