Eight arrested in Vadodara for spreading rumours about vaccine

VADODARA: The police on Sunday arrested eight persons including two women for attempting to spread rumours about Covid vaccine in the city. All the accused, who had gathered at Sayajibaug in the morning, were not wearing face masks and were allegedly planning to initiate an anti-vaccine campaign, said cops.The accused have formed groups named ‘Awaken Gujarat Movement’ and ‘Awaken Vadodarians’. “In January this year, they distributed pamphlets against Covid vaccine. We had got information that they were planning to do the same again on Sunday following which we reached the spot and arrested them,” said V B Aal, Sayajigunj police inspector.The police said that despite Covid rules requiring mandatory face masks in public place, all the accused were not wearing face masks and hadn’t maintained social distancing too.The cops have booked them under the Disaster Management Act and criminal conspiracy. The accused have been identified as Narendra Parmar, Chandrakant Mistry, Vishal Vishal Ferwani, Keval Pathadiya, Jagvinder Singh, Irfan Patel, Avni Gajjar and Bhumika Gajjar.“Four them are engineers while the women are all homemakers. Despite being well educated, they were spreading misinformation about the Covid vaccine. They were also asking people to go for Ayurvedic medicines,” Aal added.