15 more charge sheets against 292 Tablighi foreigners
nNEW DELHI: A day after 20 charge sheets were filed against 82 foreigners who are members of the Tablighi Jamaat, Delhi Police on Wednesday submitted 15 charge sheets indicting 292 more for violation of visa conditions, lockdown rules, spreading Covid-19 and breaking quarantine rules under different sections of the Foreigners Act, the Epidemic Disease Act and IPC.
Police said the accused attended a religious congregation at the Markaz, the headquarters of the Tableeghi Jamaat in Nizamuddin, in March. Now, the total number of foreigners chargesheeted in the case has risen to 374 in two days. The police have said that more than 900 people from 34 countries had arrived in India on a tourist visa or e-visa but “illegally indulged in missionary activities and attended the religious congregation, violating their visa rules”.
The 15 charge sheets, comprising 13,070 pages, were filed before the duty magistrate at the Saket district court who posted the matter for June 17. Of the 292 foreigners chargesheeted on Wednesday, 80 each are from Bangladesh and Malaysia while 44 and 39 are from Myanmar and Thailand respectively. The others are from countries such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Mali,
Nigeria, Tanzania, and South Africa, etc.
Senior crime branch officers said that the 292 foreigners belong to 14 different countries. They have all been booked under Section 14 (b) of the Foreigners Act, Section 3 of the Epidemic Disease Act, Section 51 of the Disaster Management Act and four sections (188, 269, 270 and 271) of the Indian Penal Code for violating visa conditions, lockdown rules, spreading the virus, and breaking quarantine rules, the police said.
The punishment for various offences under the penal provisions ranges from six months to eight years of imprisonment. “The visas of all the 374 foreigners have been cancelled by the Central government and they have also been blacklisted for attending religious congregations posing as tourists,” Delhi Police spokesperson Mandeep Singh Randhawa said.
Crime branch officials said that more charge sheets will be filed against in the coming days.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sought the response of the central and Delhi governments on a plea seeking a CBI probe into the alleged lapses by the Delhi government and the Delhi Police, which led to the congregation at the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in Nizamuddin and the migrant workers at the Anand Vihar Inter-state Bus Terminal in Delhi.
nNEW DELHI: Taking suo moto cognisance of a video clip in which a man had alleged that his mother, who was suffering from Covid-19, was asked to shift hospitals, the Delhi high court on Tuesday directed the Centre and the Delhi government to state the arrangements made to deal with serious patients who require immediate hospitalisation.
The court sought the status of functional and responsive helpline numbers being operated by them, as many of them were said to be found non-functional.
A bench of justices Vipin Sanghi and Rajnish Bhatnagar said the authorities “should assess the adequacy of the helpline capacity and state whether the same is sufficient to deal with the present call traffic and the traffic expected in the future”.
The Delhi government’s standing counsel (criminal), advocate Rahul Mehra provided 10 helpline numbers, including the interactive 1031. He said the helpline numbers were found not to be functioning efficiently and instructions had been issued to set the system in order in the next couple of days.
Appearing for the Centre, standing counsel Kirtiman Singh told the court that number 1075 is an all-india helpline number and about 3 lakh calls have been received on it so far.
The order comes after the court took note of a video by one Deepak Bhardwaj, who had said the deputy medical superintendent of Max Hospital, Patparganj, asked him to arrange a ventilator and bed in another hospital. His mother, Shyama Sharma, was admitted to Max Hospital, Patparganj, on May 19 and tested positive for Covid-19 on May 21.
“The patient continues to be under treatment at Max Hospital, Patparganj, and the family is convinced with her course or treatment at the hospital. Since the matter is sub-judice, we would not like to comment any further,” said Max Healthcare in a statement.