With Covid-19 leading to a steep fall in chicken prices over unfounded fears of transmission, a desperate poultry farmer in Gokak buried alive a truckload of chickens on his farm, saying he was facing massive losses. He shot a video of the gruesome burial which has gone viral, and ironically, is being passed off as culling to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Najeer Ahmad Makandar loaded 6,000 chickens all about a month old, into a truck and dumped the live birds into a large pit at Nulsoor in Belagavi's Gokak taluk.
In a interview with TOI, the farmer said, "I was left with no options as I had spent nearly 6 lakh to rear these birds. Their food and medicine cost a lot." Chickens are sold when they are between 42 and 45 days old. The poultry industry is staring at huge losses after investing lakhs of rupees as the demand has been going down due to the coronavirus scare. Three persons have been tested positive in Karnataka. The confirmed cases include a 47-year-old married woman her and 13-year-old daughter the first positive case, a 46-year-old software engineer from Dell. The girl is Karnataka's first paediatric case. Unlike the techie who had returned from the US, his wife and daughter had no travel history to any affected country.