35 Tablighi Jamaat members booked for withholding information

Shikha Salaria | TNN | May 4, 2020, 07:26 IST

Noida: At least 35 people who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi in March have been booked for allegedly withholding information about their travel history. They were already in quarantine for 14 days and were booked after they tested negative.
Police said most the Jamaat attendees were from Jharkhand, Gujarat and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and were staying in Greater Noida villages for some time. They will now be sent to Luksar jail with a medical certificate saying they have tested negative for Covid.
Additional commissioner of police (law and order) Akhilesh Singh said the 35 were sent to quarantine facilities because they were contacts of people who had tested positive earlier.
“Police officers kept asking them if they had attended the religious congregation in Delhi, but they kept denying. It was from our local sources that we came to know about their links with the Jamaat. They were put in quarantine for their own safety. But they had to be booked since they did not disclose the information and put other people’s lives at risk,” he added.
According to the FIR lodged at Rabupura police station, the attendees were staying in the area with the help of a villager named Bhutto. “After returning from their quarantine period, they started going around and visited the local mosque. This is a violation of the lockdown. They were then sent to a shelter home in Phase 2 area,” reads the FIR.
The FIR has been lodged under sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) and 270 (malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)
Another FIR registered at Dadri police station said some of the Jamaat attendees were found loitering around the madarsa where they had been kept.
While Noida police had so far been keeping those with symptoms at a temporary jail set up at Dr BR Ambedkar SC/ST hostel, the 35 attendees would be lodged in the Luksar jail for now.
Luksar jail superintendent Vipin Mishra said they had spoken to the DCP (Greater Noida) and officers there had said that since the 35 had already served their quarantine period, they posed no imminent threat to other inmates.
Sources said that the booked Jamaat attendees included 17 from Jharkhand and 11 belong to Gujarat. The rest are from Delhi and other district of UP. So far, only three of Noida’s 167 cases are linked to the Jamaat.