Indian couple hold mid-air wedding with 160 guests on board a plane to avoid lockdown rules
- The couple - known only as Rakesh and Dakshina - got married on board a SpiceJet plane with friends and family on Sunday
- They had booked a chartered flight from Madurai in the state of Tamil Nadu
- The state is under lockdown restrictions where weddings limited to 50 guests
- Video footage showed the couple tying the knot in front of more than 160 guestsAn Indian couple reportedly held a mid-air wedding with more than 160 guests on board a plane to avoid lockdown rules.
The couple - known only as Rakesh and Dakshina - got married on board a SpiceJet plane with friends and family on Sunday, after booking a chartered flight from the city of Madurai, India.
More than 160 guests were on board the Boeing 737 to attend the ceremony and video footage showed them all packed onto the hired jet as India's official death toll topped 300,000 today.
The state of Tamil Nadu, where the flight set off from, is currently under lockdown restrictions where weddings are limited to 50 guests.
Airport officials were also unaware of the proceedings taking place directly above the Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple where the couple had intended to marry.
An Indian couple reportedly held a mid-air wedding with more than 160 guests on board a plane to avoid lockdown rules
The couple - known only as Rakesh and Dakshina - got married on board a SpiceJet plane with friends and family on Sunday, after booking a chartered flight from the city of Madurai, India'The airport authority officials are totally unaware about the marriage ceremony which took place mid-air,' an airport official said.
Film and photos of the on board celebrations were posted on social media. They appear to show people with flowers around their necks and taking selfies.
In breach of civil aviation rules, hardly any of them are wearing masks and social distancing rules are blatantly ignored.
The aviation watchdog for India, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, suggested that the airline lodge a complaint against the newlyweds and their guests, reports said. All could be banned from taking passenger flights.
'The agent and the guest passengers were briefed in detail, both in writing as well as verbally, on social distancing and safety norms to be followed as per Covid guidelines both at the airport and onboard the aircraft throughout the journey,' a Spicejet spokesperson told Indian media.
'Despite repeated requests and reminders, the passengers did not follow Covid guidelines and the airline is taking appropriate action as per rules,' the official added.
A SpiceJet spokesperson told the Indian Express that the flight was booked from Madurai to Bangalore by a travel agent for a trip after a wedding.
More than 160 guests were on board the Boeing 737 to attend the ceremony and video footage showed them all packed onto the hired jet as India's official death toll topped 300,000 today. Pictutred: The newly married couple
The wedding comes after hundreds of villagers broke Covid lockdown in India to attend a funeral for a horse.
Police say villagers in southern Karnataka state gathered on Sunday to pay respects to the animal, which had belonged to a local religious organisation.
Video shows dozens of people gathered in a public square to lay floral tributes on the body of the horse, before a packed procession through the streets attended by hundreds - most of whom were not wearing masks.
Police say the village will now be cut off for 14 days with nobody allowed in or out while surge testing is carried out.
A case has also been opened against the organisers for breaking Karnataka's lockdown rules, which ban any type of mass gathering until at least July 7.
Hundreds of villagers in southern India broke lockdown in order to take part in a funeral procession for a horse that belonged to a local religious organisation
Dozens had gathered in a public square to lay floral tributes on the horse's body, before it was paraded through the streets and then cremated
India has been suffering through the world's worst second wave of Covid, driven in part by a variant which is now widely thought to be more infectious than the original virus, and in part by lax lockdowns and social distancing.
The country's vaccine programme is also lagging behind economically developed countries, with only around 10 per cent of people protected by at least one dose.
Daily case figures in the Asian nation - which for a time accounted for around 40 per cent of global totals - are now falling, but remain extremely high.
India's second wave of Covid is beginning to slow down, but the country is still reporting the largest daily case totals of anywhere in the world
Deaths are continuing to rise in India though at a slower rate as the pace of infection lessens, with more than 4,000 fatalities reported each day on average (pictured)
India is currently reporting around 250,000 cases per day according to seven-day average data, having peaked just shy of 400,000 earlier this month.
That is still far above second-place Brazil, which is reporting around 35,000. Both nations are thought to be under-counting the true total by several orders of magnitude.
While India's cases have started to fall, deaths are still rising and recently topped 4,000 per day according to seven day averages.
However, deaths are rising much slower than they have been in recent months, and are expected to start falling in the coming weeks.
India's death toll is the third-highest reported in the world, accounting for 8.6 per cent of the nearly 34.7 million coronavirus fatalities globally.
Crematorium staff, who have been working around the clock since the second wave began to rise in April, light a funeral pyre in New Delhi on Monday
Even so, the true number is thought to be significantly greater, with analysts estimating anything between twice and ten times as many people have died as on the official count.
The health ministry Monday reported 4,454 new death in the last 24 hours, bringing India's total fatalities to 303,720.
It also reported 222,315 new infections, which raised the overall total to nearly 27 million.
From the remote Himalayan villages in the north, through the vast humid central plains and to the sandy beaches in the south, the pandemic has swamped India's underfunded health care system after spreading fast across the country.
In the capital, New Delhi, residents have died at home with no oxygen as hospitals exhausted limited supplies.
In Mumbai, COVID-19 patients have died in crowded hospital corridors.
In rural villages, fever and breathlessness took people before they were even tested for coronavirus.
While the megacities have seen signs of improvement in recent days, the virus isn't finished with India by any means.
India's official Covid death toll passed 300,000 today, though experts are agreed that is almost certainly a gross under-estimate (pictured, a Covid hospital in Delhi)
People line up to get a Covid test in Jammu, northern India, as the country continues to suffer through a potent second wave of the virus
India has been trying to vaccinate its way out of the crisis, but jabs are in short supply and it will take months to ramp up production (pictured, a vaccine centre is closed in Hyderabad)
It appears to have already taken a ghastly toll in the country's vast rural areas, where a majority of the people live and where health care is limited.
In recent weeks, hundreds of bodies have washed up on the banks of the Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh state.
Many others have been found buried in shallow graves along its sandy banks. It has prompted concerns that they're the remains of COVID-19 victims.
India's vaccination drive has also slowed recently, and many states say they don't have enough vaccines to administer.
The world's largest vaccine-producing nation has fully vaccinated just over 41.6 million people, or only 3.8% of its nearly 1.4 billion population.
The first known COVID-19 death in India happened on March 12, 2020, in southern Karnataka state. It took seven months to reach the first 100,000 dead. The toll hit 200,000 deaths in late April.
The next 100,000 deaths were recorded in just 27 days after new infections tore through dense cities and rural areas alike and overwhelmed health care systems on the brink of collapse.
Average daily deaths and cases have slightly decreased in the past few weeks and the government on Sunday said it is conducting the highest number of COVID-19 tests, with more than 2.1 million samples tested in the previous 24 hours.
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