Seven people died in India from coronavirus after attending a gathering of Tabligh Jamaat at its global headquarters at Markaz Nizamuddin in Delhi, reports AFP.
Six of them died in Telangana and one man died in Srinagar after attending the event on March 13-15, reports NDTV. “So far, 24 people staying there have been found to be coronavirus positive,” said Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain. “The organisers committed a grave crime, we have asked the Lieutenant Governor for toughest action,” he said.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal ordered a police case against the Markaz Nizamuddin mosque administration over negligence that has endangered hundreds of lives. Close to 2,000 people had been staying at Markaz Nizamuddin, the Delhi headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat group, for the March 13-15 event.
More than 300 were moved to hospitals on Monday with symptoms of the highly contagious virus. The Markaz Nizamuddin was sealed off on Tuesday morning and 700 people moved out in buses are quarantined in different parts of the city. Ignoring all social distancing rules to avoid the deadly coronavirus, hundreds had been staying in the 100-year-old mosque complex, which has a six-floor dormitory, since the two-day gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat from March 13 to March 15. Some 280 were foreigners.
The Tablighi Jamaat is an Islamic missionary movement set up in 1926, with members across the world. The gathering, which featured sermons, was attended by Tablighi members from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan and Saudi Arabia. Members had also come from Afghanistan, Algeria, Djibouti, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, England, Fiji, France and Kuwait. In a statement, Markaz Nizamuddin defended itself saying the event was cancelled when prime minister Narendra Modi announced the ‘Janata Curfew’ for March 22.
Members could not leave, it said, because trains were suddenly stopped. After that, it said, lockdowns ordered first by the Delhi government and then by the prime minister left the visitors stranded in the Markaz.
A stalwart of Tabligh Jamaat in Bangladesh on March 16 told BBC Bangla Service that they did not consider such religious gathering risky. “No situation to avoid religious gatherings is created in Bangladesh as the virus did not spread here in the scale it spread elsewhere,” said Mahfuzur Rahman, a murabbi of Tabligh Jamaat in Bangladesh.
