States scramble as pilgrims transgress
The people quarantined and being searched for in the states are in addition to roughly 2,000 who were evacuated from the building since Sunday night and may have been exposed to the Sars-Cov-2 pathogen in the facility, where residents routinely dined and attended religious functions together.
Officials across the country began a frantic search for thousands of people who had been to the headquarters of a religious group in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area that has now emerged as the single-biggest source of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) infections in the country, leading to at least eight deaths and 117 confirmed cases.
The discovery of the hot spot at the six-storey building of the Tablighi Jamaat – called a markaz – triggered alarm in several circles of the government: the Delhi Police filed an FIR against functionaries of the centre for flouting social distancing rules, roughly a dozen states sounded an alert, and the Union government began the process to blacklist 275 foreign nationals belonging to the sect who purportedly flouted visa rules by claiming to be tourists.
“So far about 2,137 people (who were at the centre) have been identified in different states. They are being medically examined and quarantined,” a senior official of the Union home ministry said on Tuesday, asking not to be named.
The people quarantined and being searched for in the states are in addition to roughly 2,000 who were evacuated from the building since Sunday night and may have been exposed to the Sars-Cov-2 pathogen in the facility, where residents routinely dined and attended religious functions together.
According to a health official in the Delhi administration, who asked not to be named, at least 400 among those who have been evacuated from the building since Sunday have been taken to hospitals with symptoms of the disease. They are being tested, this official said, adding that they are preparing for at least half of these symptomatic cases to be positive for the virus.
Delhi health minister Satyender Jain said the gathering at the markaz flouted Delhi government’s orders. “The organisers have committed a grave crime. I have written a letter to LG (Lieutenant Governor) Anil Baijal to take strictest action against the organisers. We have given directions to the police to lodge an FIR as well,” Jain said, a day after the Delhi government ordered the filing of the first information report (FIR).
The functionaries of the Tablighi Jamaat denied allegations of wrongdoing and said that their members routinely arrive for events that last 3-5 days, and that the people who were left behind in the facility were stranded by the lockdown announced last week.
The largest cluster of cases that is linked to the mosque complex appears to be in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In Tamil Nadu, 50 of the 57 new Covid-19 cases confirmed on Tuesday had visited the complex earlier this month. At least 500 others were at the building and are being sought out.
Andhra and Telangana together suspect nearly 2,000 may have visited the congregation in Delhi.
Delhi banned on March 13 any seminar or conference having more than 200 people. Three days later, it prohibited any form of religious, academic, political, social, cultural, personal gathering involving over 50 people, and then gradually tightened the curbs in subsequent orders.
Government officials said the attendees flouted all these orders, and also those issued on March 19 (prohibiting the gathering of not more than 20 people) and March 21 (prohibiting the gathering of four or more people). Then on March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown in an unprecedented move that banned gatherings, and halted commercial rail and flight services.
As the lockdown began, the police asked the organisers to close the markaz, according to government officials and a purported video recording of the conversation from March 23, released by news agency ANI. But they told police that they have asked the administration for approval to transport the visitors though they did not get it.
Markaz Nizamuddin said it did not violate any provision of the law and offered its premises for setting up a quarantine facility. It also said it will cooperate with the authorities.
HT contacted Mohammed Shoaib, spokesperson of the markaz, who did not respond to calls and text message seeking response on allegations that the organisation’s members had violated visa rules.
The infections at Tablighi Jamaat came to light around March 25 when contact-tracing efforts in Telangana connected the markaz to the infections of 10 Indonesians who developed the disease and were hospitalised in Hyderabad. Six of those Indonesians have since succumbed to the disease.
According to the Union home ministry official cited in the first instance, MHA wrote a letter to all states on March 28, asking them to trace all members of the organisation. The letter also refers to reports of foreign members who were visiting Tamil Naidu and Telangana testing positive, and flags the case of Indians who had travelled to a congregation in Malaysia last month. In Malaysia, the congregation was linked to 500 of the country’s 673 cases found till mid-March. The home ministry official said the arrivals of foreign nationals associated with the sect had begun on January 1, and about 2,100 of them visited India. Of these, around 216 were staying at the Nizamuddin-based TJ headquarters and 824 are believed to have dispersed to various parts of the country.