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Police doing little to find missing Indian teens

Five members of an Indian handball team are still unaccounted for, but police say they can't do much to find them.

Published: 16 July 2014 08:55 CEST
Police doing little to find missing Indian teens
Players from the Indian team arriving at the Dronninglund Cup last week. Photo: Ole Sejfert/Dronninglund Cup
Five members of an Indian handball team are still missing somewhere in Denmark, and police say that they will not do much to find them. 
 
The five young men remain unaccounted for after six of their teammates were found in the Copenhagen area over the weekend. 
 
Police in both northern Jutland, where the boys originally disappeared on Saturday, and in Copenhagen, where six of them were found on Sunday, say that they are doing little to track down the remaining players.
 
“We’re not doing all that much to find them. After all, they are not here illegally yet,” North Jutland Police spokesman Poul Badsberg told Politiken. He referred any further questions to Copenhagen Police, which in turn said that the missing boys were a matter for the North Jutland Police.
 
The entire team of 11 young Indian men aged 13-20 ran off from an international handball tournament in Dronninglund on Saturday.
 
 
The players have told police that they left to avoid the wrath of their coaching staff. 
 
“The Indians explained that they take a beating from their coaches when they lose handball games. That’s why they ran off,” police spokesman Henrik Beck told Ritzau. “They did not want to return to India with their coaches.”
 
According to Politiken, the Indian Embassy planned to send the six found players back to India on either Tuesday or Wednesday without waiting for the remaining five.
 
The Indian players have valid visas to be in Denmark through Wednesday, after which time the remaining five teens will be considered to be in the country illegally. 
 
Badsberg said that their illegal status would make it easier for police to react.
 
“If they are found after they are in the country illegally, then it will be the police district in which they were found that will handle the case. And that would be Copenhagen Police, if they are found over there,” the North Jutland Police spokesman said. 

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INDIA

Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears

Spain will make all travellers arriving from India undergo a 10-day quarantine to prevent the potential spread of the Asian country’s coronavirus variant within the Spanish territory.

Published: 27 April 2021 15:38 CEST
Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears
Photo: JACK GUEZ/AFP

Spanish government spokesperson María Jesús Montero made the announcement on Tuesday, explaining that as there are no direct flights between Spain and India, it isn’t possible for Spain to adopt measures such as banning arrivals outright as other European countries have done.

The quarantine requirement for travellers arriving to Spain from India starts on May 1st 2021.

India joins a number of South American and African nations that are already on Spain’s quarantine list to stem the spread of the Brazilian and South African variants. 

According to the Spanish government’s website, those “coming from the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of South Africa, Republic of Botswana, Union of Comoros, Republic of Ghana, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, Republic of Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe, Republic of Peru and Republic of Colombia, must remain in quarantine for 10 days after their arrival in Spain, or for the duration of their stay if it is shorter than that. This period may end earlier, if on the seventh day the person is tested for acute infection with negative results.”

India is currently battling a record-breaking rise in Covid-19 infections that has overwhelmed hospitals and led to severe bed and oxygen shortages.

A key question is whether a new variant with potentially worrying mutations – B.1.617 – is behind what is currently the world’s fastest-growing outbreak, setting four records in a row for the highest daily coronavirus infections by one country, the latest on Sunday with 349,691 new cases.

The country has also been recording around 3,000 deaths per day from Covid-19. 

Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands have all imposed restrictions or travel bans on arrivals from India in recent days.

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“No cases of the Indian variant have been detected to date to my knowledge,” Spain’s Emergencies Coordinator Chief Fernando Simón told journalists on Monday. 

“The intel does not indicate that we have to worry about it,” he added, given that the UK variant now makes up 94 percent of all infections in Spain. 

“We cannot rule out that a case (of the Indian variant) may be detected”, Simón admitted, but “so far it is not a variant of concern, it is a variant of interest”.

Patients breath with the help of oxygen masks inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a Covid-19 coronavirus ward in New Delhi on April 27th, 2021. (Photo by Money SHARMA / AFP)

That is not a view shared by Amós José García Rojas , president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinations (AEV), who argues “we have to worry a lot” about the “chaos” that this new variant is leaving in the Asian country and why it could affect the spread of this strain of the virus.

“This new variant is fundamentally worrying because of what it is causing in India,” Rojas told medical publication Redacción Médica. 

“It shows that as there are territories where people are largely not vaccinated, there’s many people who are susceptible to the virus and it creates a breeding ground for the development of new variants”.

“We cannot vaccinate comprehensively in some countries and forget about other countries at the mercy of God.

“We have to worry about everyone because there is a risk that situations like the one seen in India will happen again. 

So far, the B.1.617 variant has been categorised by the World Health Organisation as a “variant of interest”.

Other variants detected in Brazil, South Africa and the UK have been categorised as “of concern”, because they are more transmissible, virulent or might reduce antibody efficacy.

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