NEW DELHI, 31 March 2020:
A mosque in New Delhi has turned out to be the country’s latest coronavirus hotspot after 24 people tested positive for the virus and hundreds of others were evacuated and quarantined from the complex, officials said today.
The Delhi health ministry reported that an estimated 1,500 to 1,700 people had been present in the Markaz complex – the headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat Islamic religious movement – in the capital’s Nizamuddin neighbourhood, and more than 1,000 of them had been evacuated.
“Some test reports of the samples collected from there have arrived, 24 are positive.” A health ministry official said more than 300 of the evacuees were hospitalised after being detected with symptoms of Covid-19, while around 700 others with no symptoms were sent to quarantine centres in the capital.
“The area has been sealed. The mosque and the complex where these people were living would be sanitised and disinfected.”
Hundreds of people, including foreigners, had been residing in the mosque premises since a two-day gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat held March 13-15, defying quarantine norms and social distancing imposed by the government since March 24 to check the spread of the deadly virus.
Several cases of infections detected from different parts of the country have been linked to the gathering at the religious centre.
Health officials in the southern state of Telengana reported yesterday that several of its coronavirus detections were found among the scores of people who had attended the sermons at Nizamuddin earlier this month and at least six of them had died.
“The event’s organisers committed a grave crime,” state health minister Satyendra Kumar Jain told the media today, underlining the Disaster Act and Contagious Diseases Act “was enforced in Delhi” and that assembly of more than five people was not allowed since the lockdown began on March 24.
“I have written to (Delhi’s) lieutenant governor to take strict action against them. Delhi government has given an order to file an FIR (first investigation report) against the organisers.”
In its defence, the Tablighi Jamaat took to social media today, posting a March 29 letter sent to the police – claiming its actions were not in defiance of the orders of the authorities in the wake of the outbreak.
“These persons were already there inside the ‘MARKAZ’ before and at the time of the promulgation of prohibitory-lockdown orders (…) and doors were closed immediately,” Moulana Yousuf said in a letter on behalf of the mosque.
He said efforts to de-congest the place were hampered by the lockdown orders and that they had not broken any laws as India prime minister Narendra Modi in his address had asked the people to remain where they were.
The Tablighi Jamaat is a global Sunni Muslim missionary movement whose followers are known to be apolitical and encourage Muslims to follow basic puritan form of Islam. The movement traces its origin back to India a century ago.
As of this morning, India had registered 1,251 cases of coronavirus and 32 deaths, according to official figures.
– EFE