States scramble to map trail of 8,700 Jamaat attendees

TRACING CONTACTS All put under quarantine, officials expect cases linked to congregation to rise in coming days

NEW DELHI: State governments identified on Wednesday nearly 8,700 people who attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi and deployed a large posse of police and intelligence officers and anti-terror personnel to trace anyone who attended the event that has emerged as the country’s biggest Covid-19 hot spot.

All of them, including the son of a Jharkhand minister, have been quarantined.

Data from the states showed that at least 311 people who attended the event held in Delhi’s Nizamuddin had tested positive for the infection.

So far, seven of the attendees — six in Telangana and one in Kashmir — have died.

The Centre has sounded a nationwide alert and asked police in states to trace all people who attended the congregation and get them tested.

Wednesday was the second day of tracking attendees but top officials said they expected the number of people linked to the event to rise in the coming days as many people who attended the weeks-long event returned home in the first week of March.

In some states like Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, members attended the summit on a weekly rotational basis, officials said.

“Entire Muslim dominated areas are being scanned,” said a Bihar government official, who was not willing to be named.

Across states, officials scanned all local mosques and directed heads of gram panchayats to provide information about the attendees who haven’t contacted the authorities.

The biggest jump was reported in Haryana, Kerala, UP, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Officials said in Haryana and Rajasthan, most of the 503 and 524 attendees identified, respectively, hailed from the Mewat region, which begins at the edge of the national capital region and comprises parts of Haryana and Rajasthan.

Police officers in the two states said they were trying to find out whether some of the attendees were foreigners.

In Himachal Pradesh, the government released a list of 840 persons who travelled to Nizamuddin but it was not immediately known how many of them attended the Jamaat event. On Tuesday, the figure was 17.

In Maharashtra, authorities identified over 300 persons and in Gujarat, officials named 72 people who attended the congregation. All of them have been quarantined and their swabs have been taken for Covid-19 tests.

In UP, the police identified 569 Jamaat members who attended the meeting in March, said additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Awasthi.

In Uttarakhand, 230 were identified.

Awasthi said the police were also searching for 218 foreigners, who had come to participate in the congregation and were staying in different places across Uttar Pradesh. Awasthi said they were looking whether foreigners violated visa norms, which prohibit persons coming on tourist visa to visit a religious function.

In Andhra Pradesh, 812 people were identified as having direct and indirect links with the Jamaat meeting . In Telangana, the government identified 1,030 persons who had attended the event.

Officials in the two states said their health conditions are being monitored.

In Assam, all 13 Covid-19 patients had attended the congregation.

Of the 547 attendees, 230 have been traced, said health minister Himata Biswa Sarma, appealing to the attendees to contact local health authorities.

In Bihar, where only 86 attendees, apart from 57 foreign nationals, have been tracked, the government asked the state’s anti-terror squad and district police to look for returnees.

“Those who attended the religious gathering at Nizamuddin will be traced. We are coordinating with other states to trace them,” said Bihar police chief Gupteshwar Pandey.

In neighbouring Jharkhand, Mohammad Tanveer, the son of Jharkhand minister Haji Hussain Ansari, was among the 37 people who attended the event. Tanveer is now in quarantine.

“The minister’s son and one another have been sent to quarantine run by the administration,” Deoghar superintendent of police P NK Singh said,