16 foreigners with Tablighi Jamaat links, AU professor held in Prayagraj

Kapil Dixit | TNN | Apr 22, 2020, 11:34 IST

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PRAYAGRAJ: Sixteen foreigners were arrested late Monday night under various sections of the IPC, Epidemic Diseases Act and the Foreigners Act (for violating visa rules), taking the total number of foreign nationals arrested in the country since the outbreak of Covid-19 to at least 619. Barring a few, all those arrested are linked to Tablighi Jamaat’s congregation in Delhi last month.
UP leads the list with the arrest of 341 foreign nationals, followed by 157 in Maharashtra, 66 in Bihar, 34 in Karnataka and 21 in Jharkhand. Three other states have lodged FIRs against foreigners, but no arrests have been made. Telangana has booked 88 foreign nationals, Tamil Nadu 72 and Madhya Pradesh 65.
All the 16 foreigners arrested in Prayagraj were taken to the temporary isolation jail set up in Naini prison. Along with foreigners, a professor of Allahabad University, too, was arrested for arranging accommodation for nine TJ delegates and not informing police and administration about them.
85% of 341 foreigners held in UP are Bangladeshi
The professor had also attended the congregation in Nizamuddin along with the foreigners.
Around 85% of the total 341 foreigners arrested in UP are Bangladeshis, according to police records. Rest of them are from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The foreigners have been mostly booked under Section 14 (b) of the Foreigners Act, 1946 which does not allow a person visiting India on a tourist visa to take part in other activities.
In Maharashtra, 15 FIRs have been lodged against 157 foreigners for violation of the Foreigners Act. All of them had attended the congregation at Nizamuddin in Delhi. They are lodged in different jails across the state.
In Bihar, of the 66 arrested, 21 are from Malaysia, 18 from Bangladesh, 17 from Indonesia, nine from Kyrgyzstan and one from Kazakhstan. They have been sent to jail by various courts after their 14-day quarantine period ended.
In Karnataka, of the 34 foreigners arrested, 29 are associated with TJ. Most of them will be sent to jail once their quarantine period is over, police said. In Jharkhand, all the 21 foreigners arrested are linked to TJ. While 11 are from Indonesia, six are from Kazakhstan and four from China. All of them are lodged in jails after their quarantine period got over.
(With inputs from Mumbai, Patna, Ranchi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bhopal)