India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, APRIL 1—Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad and six others have been booked by the Delhi Police on charges of spreading coronavirus.
The case was registered on Wednesday.
The FIR names Maulana Saad, Zeeshan, Mufti Shehzad, M Saifi, Younus, Mohammad Salman and Mohammed Ashraf. An official of the Hazarat Nizamuddin police station said that they had been charged under various sections of the Epidemic Disease Act.
Perhaps this is the first case registered against any individual or an organisation for spreading coronavirus.
The FIR registered in the Hazrat Nizamuddin Police station says that the seven were responsible for the huge congregation and they allowed the visitors, domestic and foreign, stay in the building despite a notice issued to them on March 24 when a countrywide lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to contain the spread of the dreaded coronavirus.
But Maulana Saad and other Tablighi leaders have said that after the announcement of ‘Janata Curfew’, they managed to remove 1500 persons from the Markaz and sent them to their native places.
The Markaz also contacted the police and sub divisional magistrate (SDM) of the area to seek passes for buses so that they could remove the persons stranded in the Markaz but the administration failed to do so.
Meanwhile, various Muslim organisations including Jamaat-e-Islami and Students Islamic Organisation, have reacted strongly to the Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal ordering registration of case against the Tablighi Jamaat people and demonising the Markaz as coronavirus hotspot. A section of the media is also indulging in giving it a communal colour, apart from some political groups indulging in divisive politics over the issue.
