Fifteen members of a family fromMaharashtra's Pune district have been kept at a government quarantine facility after they violated the home quarantine order, a police official said on Thursday.The family members went to the state's Osmanabad district on March 22 to attend the last rites of a relative, despite the state government having advised people to avoid gatherings and follow social distancing, the official said.Following the announcement of 21-day nationwide lockdown last month, the authorities asked them to remain under home quarantine in Osmanabad and stamped their hands."After spending a couple of days there, the family members sought permission to return to Pune, which was turned down by local authorities. On Tuesday night, the family hired a mini-bus and a driver and escaped from Osmanabad," the official said.They used all the minor roads where police personnel were not deployed, but the bus was caught by Pune rural police near Wadgaon on old Mumbai-Pune highway."Despite all of them having home quarantine stamps on their hands, they were travelling in a bus. We have now put them under institutional quarantine," the official said.The state government last month decided to put stamps on the hands of people undergoing home quarantine for suspected exposure to the novel coronavirus.Maharashtra has so far reported 338 COVID-19 cases and 16 deaths due to the viral infection.
