Coronavirus: More than 800 foreigners linked to Jamaat found hiding in Delhi mosques

Previously, when the security agency and health workers came close to concluding the driving out of 2,300 individuals from the Tablighi Jamaat headquarters in the national capital, investigations guided the police to come to the conclusion that there were some more foreigners lodging in other mosques in Delhi.

On 31st March, the Delhi police dispatched an urgent word to the Delhi government. It was to put in for help to track down the remaining jamaat workers out of the city’s mosques. The police message had listed 16 mosques.

Investigators were all equipped to hunt down 187 foreigners and two dozen Indians who had moved to the mosques following the congregation at the headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area.

It came to light that they were absolutely wrong.

In four days, the cooperated team of police, health workers and civil servants broadened the net to cover a huge number of mosques and have found more than 800 foreigners connected to the religious sect in Delhi.

“The big fear is that many of them would turn out to be positive cases, and could have already infected many others,” the official said.

The Jamaat workers have been accommodated in various government quarantine centre across Delhi. The ones who were found hiding are yet to be tested. That process is expected to start in few days.

A senior official in the Delhi government’s home department verified the turn of events but laid stress on that he could not put a number on the foreigners found. “We are still in the process of getting final reports from the field,” he told Hindustan Times.

But there are some approximate figures from some district, 200 in south-east district, 170 in south district and 7 in west district, an official in the security establishment staated.

Security agencies who looked into the registers for foreign nationals maintained at the Markaz discovered 2,100 foreigners had touched base after landing in the country between 1st March and 18th March. From them, 216 were still at the Jammat headquarters when the crackdown happened and 824 had by then left for chilla.

“We believe that the remaining 900-odd foreigners are mostly hiding in mosques around the city,” he said, adding that they were keeping their fingers crossed.

Officials recall that by the time they evacuated the followers from the Markaz, 24 people had already tested positive and almost were symptomatic. The Delhi government has not received all the test reports. However the Markaz associated cases already make up for two third of all Covid-19 patients in the national capital.

The Delhi government counted 386 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the national capital. From them 259 are Markaz cases. Reports from other parts of the country havee also cited that quote a few people who took part in the Nizamuddin congregation had tested positive.

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