A 56-year-old man who had stepped out to buy groceries, a 27-year-old on a motorcycle and a middle-aged shopkeeper were among those prosecuted in Salt Lake and Baguiati in northeast Kolkata for not wearing masks on Monday.
The Bidhannagar commissionerate carried out a drive across several pockets, including the AE Block market and the Karunamoyee bus stand, and prosecuted 13 men for moving around maskless, a senior officer said.
The offenders were charged under the Disaster Management Act and were let off after paying a fine.
In Salt Lake, cops stopped people without masks or with their face coverings hanging around the chin or neck.
A policeman in Salt Lake urges residents to wear masks on Monday Telegraph picture
They were asked to board a police vehicle and taken to Bidhannagar North police station, where they were prosecuted.
The police also made frequent announcements through loudhailers asking people to wear masks.
Many were given masks on the spot.
At the AE Block market, a 56-year-old man who had stepped out to buy groceries was stopped by a police team and asked to board the police vehicle. He was not wearing a mask.
“I always carry a mask but today I dropped it inside the market while looking for change in my pocket. The mask fell from the pocket of my jacket,” the man tried to explain to the officer, who told him that he would not
have lost the mask had he been wearing it in the first place.
At the intersection of the Karunamoyee bus stand, a police team stopped a motorcycle whose pillion rider did not have a face covering.
The 27-year-old man told the cops that his mask “flew during the ride”.
A drive was conducted at a few markets in Baguiati as well, but there it was mostly confined to making announcements urging people to follow the Covid protocol and distributing masks to those who did not have any.
An officer said they also warned a number of shopkeepers who had been found doing business without masks that their stalls would be closed for a week if they continued to violate the mask mandate.
A senior officer of the commissionerate said the drives were part of a continuing effort to make people aware of the need to wear masks to fight the Covid pandemic.