Pune-based filmmaker Nachiket Guttikar was packing up things to leave for his home state Maharashtra when a nationwide lockdown was announced to combat the coronavirus threat.

Senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily on Saturday said the government's economic relief was like "peanuts" when compared with the economic devastation in the country and asserted that it should have offered packages amounting to at least 9 per cent of the GDP to help the people amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two sanitation workers were allegedly attacked with an axe at Khategaon town in Madhya Pradesh's Dewas district and the police have arrested four persons in this regard, an official said on Saturday.

A 35-year-old woman who fell sick while standing in a queue at a shop in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district to collect free ration being distributed during lockdown died at a hospital, officials said on Saturday.

The Congress on Saturday constituted a consultative group with former prime minister Manmohan Singh as its chairman to deliberate on "current concerns" and formulate views and policy of the party on important issues.

An 85-year-old coronavirus patient, who was declared cured and was under treatment for kidney and heart-related ailments died early Saturday at a hospital here.

Three labourers died of suffocation while cleaning the septic tank of a bungalow in Virar town of Maharashtra's Palghar district, police said on Saturday.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday described the COVID-19 pandemic as a "huge challenge" and an "opportunity", saying there is a need to mobilise the country's scientists, engineers and data experts to work on innovative solutions to the crisis.