People offer Friday prayers at home amid lockdown

People in Gautam Budh Nagar district offered namaz at home on Friday as district mosques remained shut for outsiders on the second Friday of the 21-day national

People in Gautam Budh Nagar district offered namaz at home on Friday as district mosques remained shut for outsiders on the second Friday of the 21-day national lockdown. Meanwhile, the police continued patrolling the streets and also used drone surveillance to ensure there was no public gathering.

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The Prime Minister on March 24 had announced a 21-day lockdown in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Mosques in the district had remained shut on March 27, the first Friday of the three-week lockdown, while people avoided venturing outside.

“We had urged the people to offer their prayers from the safety of their homes. Today (Friday) also the mosque remained closed and only those who stay inside it offered prayers. We have put a notice outside the mosque requesting clergy members to stay at home till the lockdown is in place, and several other mosques also made similar announcements on loudspeaker yesterday,” said Shahid, the cleric at Nithari mosque.

Places of worship in Gautam Budh Nagar had closed even before the national lockdown was announced. Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which bans the gathering of more than four people. has also been enforced in the district.

Clerics had made announcements on Thursday requesting people to stay indoors and not gather with relatives or neighbours for prayers at any private or public place.

In order to ensure that there were no violations of the lockdown, the district police remained on high alert.

“ The police teams continued patrolling and we also used drones to monitor the situation. We wanted to be on the lookout for any gatherings on terraces in the city. However, no such incident was reported,” deputy commissioner of police (zone 1), Sankalp Sharma, said.

On April 1, a video showing a dozen men offering namaz on the terrace of a house in Sector 16’s JJ colony cluster did the rounds on social media after which the police filed an FIR in the matter. The police had said that all of the men did not live in the house but had gathered from the nearby areas.

“All of the 12 men have been arrested. The two men, who remained at large till now, were arrested Thursday from Sector 16,” Sharma said.

On Thursday, the Gautam Budh Nagar commissioner of police had instructed all police personnel to keep an eye out for any gatherings by continuing patrolling and appealing to religious leaders to avoid offering prayers publicly.

“We patrolled the streets today and based on the instructions given, drones were flown at several places in Dadri to ensure there was no public gathering by people from any religion,” DCP (zone 3), Rajesh Kumar Singh, said.

Police personnel also carried out flag marches in the city with units of the Rapid Action Force.