Designer's husband held for letting virus infected cook flee city; released on Khan's intervention

Pakistan's Punjab province police arrested the husband of a well-known fashion designer for "deliberately" letting their coronavirus infected cook flee Lahore city, but released him hours later on the intervention of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

On early Tuesday police arrested Tahir Saeed, husband of fashion designer Maria B, for sending his coronavirus positive cook to his house in Vehari district, some 250 kms from Lahore.

The couple (Maria and Saeed) neither informed the authorities nor took the cook to a hospital for treatment. Instead, the employee was sent to his native village in a bus.

According to the First Information Report, the couple's servant was tested positive for coronavirus, but Saeed, the owner of the brand, sent him to his native village in Vehari through a bus. He changed two buses to arrive at the destination putting all so many people at risk during the journey.

"This shameful couple should have been behind bars for endangering the lives of so many. After knowing that their cook was test coronavirus positive they sent him home (in a village in Vehari) instead of getting him admitted at any health facility in Lahore. They even could have called police or other emergency numbers to shift the patient to hospital but they are callous human beings, said police officer Muhammad Ikram.

He said it was a criminal act of the couple and now the entire village (where the cook lives) will have to be kept in quarantine.

The FIR has been registered against Saeed but spared Maria B under Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 270 (malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) and 271 (disobedience to quarantine rule) of the Pakistan Penal Code as well as Article 144 and 143 of the Police Order, 2002.

However, Saeed was released on bail after Maria B made a passionate appeal to Prime Minister Khan to intervene. Later she thanked the premier for securing the release of her husband.

Maria B, however, in a video message which went viral online on Tuesday, addressed Khan that last her house was raided by policemen as if she was the biggest drug mafia don in Lahore. She said the police arrested her husband without any reason and my family was treated like criminals.

She said after the lab report, which declared their chef positive for the virus, they quarantined him in the servant quarter.

Later, the servant asked them to send him to Vehari and they arranged a separate vehicle for him. They said, in fact, their chef had contracted virus while coming to Lahore from Vehari in a bus.

On Wednesday Pakistan's coronavirus cases climbed past to 1,000 nearly a month after its first patient surfaced. Seven persons have died of coronavirus so far in the country.