Mohammad Jamil Khan

Soaring prices of essentials in Ramadan have become a major burden at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are struggling with reduced income due to the coronavirus restrictions.

A total of 218 policemen tested Covid-19 positive as of yesterday while 652 others of the force are in quarantine, says the Police Headquarters (PHQ).

Dhaka Metropolitan Police is set to go tougher on those who would roam around streets as the number of Covid-19 patients has been ratcheting up in the country.

Sadek Ali, a boatman who plies his trade on the Buriganga, took loans from his relatives to send his only son to Brunei two months ago. This, he hoped, would bring his family better days, and finally allow him to retire from after a 20-year long career.

They spent their childhood working as labourers in the capital’s Karwan Bazar kitchen market. Their task was to unload vegetables from trucks that arrived in droves at the market.

Around 30,000 restaurants across the country were eagerly waiting for this year’s Pahela Baishakh, expecting that they would get booming sales. But none of them could have imagined what would happen in the coming days.

Vegetable farmers are incurring severe losses amid the countrywide shutdown that has been imposed to contain coronavirus spread.

Amid a supply shortage of imported fruits -- that reportedly meets 60 percent of the country’s demand, prices are rising in markets at the capital.

At a time when law enforcers are enforcing social distancing among people to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the agency is failing to apply the same for its own members.

Empty streets and people everywhere walking around in masks have made business owners in the capital weary, as a number of recent reports suggest that some criminals are looking at the countrywide shutdown as an opportunity.

When thousands of homebound people on March 24 thronged Airport Railway Station in Dhaka, sepoy Saddam Hossain of Railway Nirapatta Bahini (RNB) was given the responsibility to deter people from getting on the train roof.

The directorate of prisons has opened six division-wise isolation centers inside jails for inmates, to keep any potential coronavirus patient.

“Have you brought food for us?” This was what 10-year-old Sohana asked these correspondents at the beginning of this conversation at Kamalapur Railway Station on Sunday noon.

They were cooks by profession and had a reputation for cooking quite well.

Police yesterday arrested six people for “spreading rumours” and claimed to have kept over 100 social media accounts under surveillance for their involvement in spreading misleading information and rumours regarding the coronavirus outbreak.

The 10-day shutdown that has been imposed to prevent contagious spread of coronavirus induced a sleep-like quiescence on the streets of Dhaka. Both security guards and users of the ATM booths in the capital are feeling the pinch of such an unprecedented emptiness.

At least 30 beds for as many policemen are crammed into a dorm room of about 450sqft at Mohammadpur Police Camp in the capital.

Some police personnel resorted to excesses while restricting people’s movement and enforcing social distancing in some parts of the country yesterday.

Amid mounting concerns over the spread of coronavirus, police have so far been able to locate and ensure the quarantine of only 2.7 percent of the total number of returnees from different countries in the last three month.

Counterterrorism unit officials of police claim to have identified around a hundred social media accounts, whose users have allegedly showed interest in joining militancy or the war in Syria.