India’s initial fight against the coronavirus pandemic was derailed by the ominous Tablighi Jamaat Markaz event that was held at Nizamuddin in Delhi, mid-March. Since then, a large majority of the cases have been directly or indirectly influenced by the hoodlums of Jamaat. After putting them into quarantine centres for their treatment, the Tablighis are now being sent to the detention camps by authorities to face the music.
According to media reports, the Delhi Police is in process of shifting 567 Jamaatis who had come to India from Indonesia, Malaysia, France, and the US, to “makeshift detention centers” as they have completed their requisite quarantine period.
The Tablighi’s came here on a tourist visa instead of a missionary visa and participated in religious conferences which is a clear violation of visa rules.
Any individual who wants to take part in religious activity in India is required to come on a missionary visa. Consequently, these jamaati’s have been booked under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act.
The Delhi Police have already identified a few places where the centers will come up. These include a few schools and community centers in outer Delhi. The police have also taken travel documents of all the foreigners.
After taking the due course of legal action on the 500-odd Tablighi’s, the government is likely to expedite the process to deport these illegal Jamaati’s to their respective countries.
As keeping them in the country might be hazardous for the locals as they can probably strike a second wave of the deadly virus.
“If they stay here, it will be an added responsibility and we need to make sure that they do not roam around unnecessarily, which can be risky,” a source was quoted as saying to ThePrint.
While the Delhi government has sprung on to the scene now, the Yogi government has been far ahead in punishing the Jamaati’s.
The authorities in UP had set up 34 temporary jails, including two for women, to lodge over 350 Tablighi Jamaat members post the completion of their quarantine period for attending the mass-gathering whilst defying the restrictions imposed by the government.
Meanwhile, Himanta Biswa Sharma had warned the Jamaatis that if they did not get their act right, the quarantine facility could itself be turned into a jail. “If anybody attempts to leave without the doctor’s clearance, then we will be forced to declare the Quarantine facility into a temporary jail and they will be kept here for three months under non-bailable sections”, the minister had remarked earlier.
On March 31 the Union Home Ministry had also blacklisted 800 Indonesian Islamic preachers of Tablighi Jamaat for violating the visa rules. A foreigner who is blacklisted cannot get a visa from any of the missions abroad to come to India.
The congregation is responsible for a large number of COVID-19 cases in the entire South-east Asia region. Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Singapore are some of the few countries that have been done bad by the conservative orthodox cult.
Therefore it is indispensable that the Tablighi Jamaat and its hoodlum members penance for their misdeeds. Proper judicial trials, financial reparations, and ultimately deportation is the only way to go about in treating the Jamaatis.