Actor-Politician Vijayakanth offers land to bury Covid-19 victims

Actor-Politician Vijayakanth has come forward to donate a piece of land he owns to bury or cremate bodies of COVID-19 victims in the wake of opposition from people to bury bodies of those affected by a coronavirus. In a statement, Vijayakanth said he is allotting a piece of land near Shri Andal Alagar College of Engineering located near Chennai. He also requested the state government to educate people that coronavirus does not spread through corpses, and asked his political party workers to do the same.

Vijayakanth’s statement comes to a couple of days after 55-year-old neurosurgeon Dr. Simon Hercules succumbed to COVID-19 at a private hospital in Chennai. When his body was brought to a cemetery in Anna Nagar (Chennai), local residents protested and attacked. The ambulance too was damaged.

Even since the lockdown, several southern actors have contributed towards the welfare of their respective film industry and daily wage workers. From Ajith to Raghava Lawrence, Prabhas, and Mahesh Babu, the top stars have donated generously. In the Telugu industry, Chiranjeevi has been leading from the front to help daily wage employees via Corona Crisis Charity, a committee set up to attend to the needs of daily laborers. 

“I discussed with a few people from the industry and they were ready to help. When I announced the ‘Corona Crisis Charity’, many actors, producers and others responded immediately and donated. Since we couldn’t go out, we took the help of people in the software industry to track the workers through their Aadhaar cards,” he said in an interview to Deccan Chronicle.