A student from Maharashtra, studying at a university near Wuhan in China, said on Thursday that initially there was no restriction on movement on people in the city, which was later placed under lockdown as the Covid-19 cases started mounting.

Today, the streets are deserted, no private vehicles ply on the roads and public transport is virtually absent, said Ashish Kurme, an MBBS student.

“Examinations of the university were conducted from December 27, 2019 to January 3, 2020. The first patient of the virus was detected on December 8, but we did not know about this case till the January first week,” Kurme said while talking to a Marathi news channel on Thursday night.

“Videos showing dead bodies lying on the roads in Wuhan were fake. I came to know about these videos after coming back to India,” said Kurme, who is in his early 20s.

He said life in the vibrant city, the capital of Hubei province, slowly started to change.

“The process to monitor daily body temperature was on since the first week of January. We were moving freely and I had been to markets and friends’ houses till January 23. But this day a lockdown was announced and our movement was hampered.

“We were made to remain in our residences and our teachers took care of our needs. Chinese citizens were not allowed to enter our premises till we were there,” Kurme said.

As the situation worsened, the MBBS student started thinking about returning home.

“I was quarantined for 14 days when I landed in India and was sent back home (in Latur) after the observation period ended,” he said.

Meanwhile, videos have emerged showing Wuhan residents haranguing a top Chinese official which highlights persistent anger at how authorities have handled the crisis.

The clips, which have been circulating online since Thursday, show occupants of an apartment block in the city of Wuhan yelling “it’s all fake” from windows during an official neighbourhood inspection by Vice Premier Sun Chunlan.

According to Chinese media, the complaints were an outcry against the community’s property management, who were allegedly only pretending to have volunteers deliver vegetables and meat to inhabitants of the towers in the lockdowned city.

HT