When the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 24, a small community of 15,000 members living in East Ahmedabad knew their safety wouldn't exactly be priority for the government. The biggest ghetto of the Chhara community, Chharanagar barely has a motorable road or continuous water supply or sanitation facilities. "Chharas is one of the hundreds of tribes originally listed as criminal tribes under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. While the Criminal Tribes Act of 1952 repealed the notification and de-notified these tribal communities, not much changed in terms of public opinion. Many Chharas continue to be perceived as habitual criminals and live as outcasts, in social isolation," says Dakxin Chhara, 47, the first Indian feature filmmaker to have emerged from the denotified tribe.

About 80 per cent of them are known to make a livelihood by brewing and selling liquor, illegally. "Gujarat is a dry state, so the practice is illegal. But the problem is most of the members, even if educated, are denied jobs." When the lockdown was announced, they stopped brewing alcohol for a few weeks. "But when they started incurring losses, they were at it again. As a result, more people began to get infected by the virus. In just 1.5 months, we lost 29. We even requested the government to declare Chharanagar a containment zone, but in vain."