Remember the COVID-19 patient in Kasaragod who waltzed through the Calicut airport after arriving from Dubai, took a sleeper coach, attending marriages, shook hands with a couple of MLAs and thereby forced the lockdown of an entire district?

Well, that patient is “a suspicious person with smuggling history,” said a senior Customs official at the Calicut Airport.

“He is a suspicious person. We believe that he is involved in smuggling of goods,” said the senior official, who requested condition of anonymity. He added that the patient has a history of smuggling.

According to the official, the person has a “weird travel history” which is making the authorities smell a rat.

“Every week, he travels to different cities in the Gulf,” the official said.

On March 11, Ameer A, the patient belonging to Eriyaal village near Palliyara in Kasaragod, had arrived from Dubai. He tested positive on March 19 and was quarantined.

In the interim eight days, he had attended marriage functions, football competitions and had also hugged and shaken hands with two MLAs, who are now in self-isolation at their homes.

Interestingly, Kerala officials are struggling to track the detailed route map of Ameer’s travel and meeting details.

As a COVID-19 treatment protocol, officials have to prepare a route map of infected patients to find a patient’s primary and secondary contacts in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.

On Saturday, Kasaragod District Collector D Sajith Babu said Ameer was not cooperating with officials in preparing the route map.

“He is not telling the truth and it has become difficult to prepare the map,” he said.