Imphal( Manipur), May 31 : Already battling liver cancer, Asian Games gold medal-winning former boxer Dingko Singh has tested positive for COVID-19, adding to his health complications which earlier came in the way of an urgently-arranged radiation therapy.
The 41-year-old Arjuna and Padma Shri awardee has been admitted to a hospital in Imphal, just over a week after returning from Delhi.
“He (Dingko Singh) was negative when he left from Delhi but has tested positive on his return to Manipur,” the source told PTI.
“He has been admitted to a hospital there, adds another battle to the ones he is already fighting. While he was in Delhi till last week, his nurse had tested positive but he himself was negative at the time of leaving,” he added.
Singh’s scheduled radiation therapy in March was delayed because of the national lockdown and he was brought to Delhi in an air ambulance arranged by the Boxing Federation of India in the last week of April.
However, his therapy could still not be completed because of jaundice and he took an arduous 2400km road journey back to Manipur in an ambulance.
“Perhaps he caught the infection in the ambulance. I don’t know, it could be anything. I guess all those who came in contact with him during his stay in Delhi will also have to quarantine and get tested,” the source said.
Singh has been battling ill-health for a number of years now, starting with the liver cancer, for which he is being treated since 2017. In between, he has also suffered from jaundice.
The swashbuckling former bantamweight boxer won the Asian Games gold in the 1998 edition in Bangkok.
He won the Arjuna award in 1998 and was bestowed the nation’s fourth highest civillian honour — the Padma Shri — in 2013.
A maverick, who inspired the likes of six-time world champion M C Mary Kom, Singh is employed with the Indian Navy and also worked as a coach before ill-health confined him to his home.
Meanwhile , 4 more persons, including three women, tested positive for COVID-19 in Manipur, taking the total number of such cases in the state to 66, an official said on Sunday.
All the new patients – two from Kangpokpi and one each from Imphal East and West districts- had recently returned to the state by a Shramik Special train and were in quarantine centres, he said.
“They are stable,” the official at the state’s COVID-19 common control room here said.
Necessary containment measures and contact tracing were underway, he said.
The two from Kangpokpi district had returned from Pune, while two others had come from Delhi, the official said.
Manipur currently has 59 active coronavirus cases, and patients have recovered from the disease.
The state, which was declared COVID 19-free on April 19, recorded a surge in the number of cases with migrants from other parts of the country returning home.
(With PTI inputs )
