You’ve probably seen people hiding in the bushes and wearing all kinds of silly disguises in order to go outside without being stopped by police, but now you can add faking death to the list of things people have resorted to in order to circumvent the coronavirus lockdown.

Just like Italy, India imposed nationwide lockdown from last Wednesday to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which left many citizens stranded hundreds of kilometers away from home, with no way to return. That was the case of Hakim Din, a 70-year-old villager from Poonch, in India’s disputed Kashmir region. He was being treated for a minor head injury at a hospital in Jammu, a few hundred kilometers away from home, when the lockdown was enforced, and he started looking for ways to get back. When an ambulance driver suggested that he play dead in order to get past the checkpoints, he jumped at the opportunity.

Photo: Pixabay

According to Poonch Superintendent of Police, Ramesh Angral, Din and three others managed to get past several control checkpoints by lying perfectly still under white covers. The ambulance driver also mislead authorities by showing them a fake death certificate from the hospital. However, at the last checkpoint before they reached home, the ambulance was stopped and the “dead bodies” inspected.

“A policeman there immediately figured out that the men lying covered inside the ambulance could not be dead,” Angral said.

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The men were arrested and quarantined separately, the Superintendent added. They are now facing charges of “cheating and defying the government’s prohibitory orders”.