54 Tablighi Jamaat attendees put under quarantine at MLA hostel

Joint team of Nagpur Police and Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) picked 54 attendees of Markaz Tablighi Jamaat in Nizamuddin at Delhi this month and put them under quarantine at MLA Hostel. Blood samples of these persons were sent to hospital for coronavirus test. 

Municipal Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe in his video address informed that many persons from the city had gone to Nizamuddin in Delhi to attend the gathering. “We reached out to 54 such persons and they are now under quarantine at MLA hostel,” he said. The administration suspect that apart from these, many citizens must have gone to Delhi to attend the event. “If anyone noticing symptoms of coronavirus, they should immediately contact NMC to get immediate treatment,” he stressed.  

Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Special Branch Shweta Khedkar informed ‘The Hitavada’ that these persons were picked from the jurisdictions of 22 police stations. She also urged people to reach out the administration for medical test. 

Sources informed that the administration received a list of 52 persons from city and four from Hingna area of Nagpur rural. Of these 52 persons, four are yet to come in the city. It means that 48 attendees of Tablighi Jammat from city area were picked by the administration along with their six close contacts. 

It may be mentioned that after massive spread of coronavirus among the attendees of Markaz Tablighi Jamaat in Nizamuddin at Delhi, Maharashtra Government launched a hunt to identify persons from the State who had gone to the annual gathering.

The police and other departments are working together to trace the attendees. The Union Home Ministry has alerted all States to identify the attendees. A list of suspected attendees were also sent to Maharashtra Government. Office of Director General of Police (DGP) Maharashtra has forwarded list of attendees to police units with a list of dos and don’ts. 

Nagpur Police have received names of attendees from city who had gone to the congregation. However, the authorities are suspecting that the actual number could be bigger than that received in the list.

Joint teams of police and health department started operations in the city to quarantine the persons. After finding symptoms of Covid-19, contact mapping of these attendees would be done and they would be taken for the test.

It may be mentioned here that the headquarters of a religious sect in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area has emerged as one of the biggest Covid-19 hotspots in India with 24 people testing positive and nearly 200 others showing symptoms when officials began evacuating the six-storey building of some 1,400 people who are believed to have been exposed to the virus.

The building belongs to the Tablighi Jamaat that hosted this month its annual congregation with attendees coming from several foreign nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia before they spread out to other parts of the country such as Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh, creating a web of close contacts that now threatens to create an explosion of cases in the country.

Eight of these people, including seven who went to Hyderabad and one who went to Srinagar, have succumbed to the disease. The Hyderabad deaths took place on Monday.