Writ filed seeking withdrawal of lockdown from red zones

A writ petition has been filed in the High Court (HC) seeking directives to withdraw lockdown form red zones announced by the government and to introduce normal economic activities across the country.

Professor Dr Muhammad Manjurul Karim of Micro-biology Department of Dhaka University (DU) filed the petition with the virtual HC bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim.

Lawyer of the petitioner Sheikh Omar Sharif confirmed the matter on Monday.

He said, ‘The government has recently declared various areas of the country as red zones to combat the coronavirus and has imposed a lockdown there. According to the Communicable Diseases (Prevention, Control and Eradication) Act, 2018, the government can only impose restrictions on the movement of people infected with infectious diseases, their homes or used goods. The government has no legal authority to lock down entire areas or cities due to sick people.’

The writ stated that there is no proven scientific evidence for the idea that lockdown can stop death rate of coronavirus. This is because, the first 10 countries in the world with the highest death rate by coronavirus (as a death rate per million population) went through lockdown. On the other hand, Sweden is in the 11th position in terms of death rate without lockdown. In many countries, the number of victims has dropped since the lockdown withdrawn. A detailed report in this regard was published on the British daily 'The Sun' on 22 May.

The lawyer said hard immunity is the only scientific way to protect against this type of virus. In order to achieve hard immunity in the country, all the restrictions imposed illegally on movement of healthy and sound citizens must have to be lifted.


Dhaka/Mahidi/AKA