Kerala Police drone video shows lockdown flouters running away like 'tracer bullets'

They have been seen on the streets relentlessly seizing vehicles and grimly talking sense into compulsive lockdown violators, but police in Kerala have shown they can see the funny side of things as well.
The state's police force posted to Twitter an edited video which compiled shots of people mostly in the villages running for cover as drones appeared above to check for those who were violating the lockdown over the Covid-19 epidemic.

The video set to twice normal speed for comic effect showed young men running through coconut groves, paddy fields and sandy beaches while the less athletic ones sought to crouch behind trees or even among the boulders of a sea wall.

But the laughs are more from what they set as background audio - cricket commentator and present Indian team head coach Ravi Shastri's #tracerbulletchallenge of 2016, wherein he asked his colleagues in the box to dub his trademark line, 'that's gone to the fence like a tracer bullet'.

The mashup featured voices of famous former cricketers Sunil Gavaskar , Sanjay Manjrekar and Ian 'Beefy' Botham among others taking the challenge.

Shastri had recently referenced his pet phrase while tweeting on the pandemic, saying, "Only thing flying around the world like a tracer bullet is this bloody Corona (COVID-19). Stay in before the bugger gets you."

This is the latest among the drone compilations released by the state police with earlier ones titled, sportingly, 'trouble from the sky' showing similar scenes set to popular Mollywood film dialogues and songs.

And there is a good reason why those people were running away from the drones- so far Kerala Police have till Wednesday filed nearly 2.5 lakh cases, made 25,125 arrests and seized 17,375 vehicles in all for flouting social distancing rules.

While they have boots on the ground in most of the cities and major towns, police in the southern state have also started using a network of unmanned aerial vehicles in rural areas especially along the coasts where they cannot reach quick enough.

Some of the drones are also fitted with police sirens, flashing lights and recorded messages warning people against going into public spaces without valid reasons.

If not many are complaining - barring a few incidents - against the incessant crackdown on the roads, and now from the skies, it may be because they have also seen these men and women in khaki on the frontlines of the state's pushback against the epidemic.

Over the past few weeks police in Kerala, as in some other parts of the country, have been seen helping the ill to hospitals, fetching medicines for those under observation, running community kitchens for the homeless and even venturing to make half a million masks for distribution among the public.