THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A Crime Branch probe has been ordered to track down the people who had interacted with Pothencodu native Abdul Azeez who died due to Covid-19 infection on Tuesday.
The decision was taken after it was assessed that he had interacted with a lot of people, but their identities were not clear.
The authorities has also appealed to the public to turn up before the health department officials in case they had come across the person, but the response has been poor. Police sources said it is because of this, a Crime Branch probe has been ordered. The probe, the police sources said, will initially focus on finding the places he had visited other than what have been confirmed so far.
Once the places have been identified, the next step will be to locate the people, who were present in the vicinity of the person. The police sources said a time-line will be sought from Google to find out the places he had travelled. However, the police said they cannot expect much result by locating the mobile phone tower location of the deceased man as it won’t throw up any details of those who had been in close contact with him.
Google’s help to prepare flow chart
Top police sources said Google has been helping the officials of the Health Department and National Informatics Centre to prepare the flow chart by providing the time-line of the infected persons. However, this service is restricted to the Covid-19-infected only due to privacy issues and it cannot be sought in case of primary and secondary contacts.