Tablighi Jamaat head Maulana Saad, who has been booked for defying restrictions on public gatherings, concealed crucial information on the number and the health condition of those inside the Islamic missionary group's headquarters in Delhi's Nizamuddin, which has emerged as a hot spot driving up the tally of Covid-19 cases in India, according to multiple police and government officials.
On March 25, when a joint team of police and health officials went inside for the first time, people in the six-storey building hid in bathrooms, concealed symptoms of the contagious disease even as some took medicines to reduce their body temperature, a senior police officer said on the condition of anonymity.
This officer also said the Jamaat management lied about the size of the gathering, putting the number of people present between 800 and 1,000. The joint team of police, health workers, and the World Health Organization has evacuated 2,346 people, including at least 250 foreigners, from the building in a 50-hour operation till Wednesday morning. They have been sent to quarantine centres and hospitals.
Saad and six other top functionaries of the group were booked on Tuesday after the Jamaat headquarters emerged as the single-biggest source of Covid-19 infections in the country. By Wednesday evening, the headquarters, also known as Markaz, was linked, directly and indirectly, to at least 283 infections and eight deaths.
States have been instructed by the cabinet secretary to trace the thousands of attendees of the March event organised by the Jamaat. Over 500 people who were at the headquarters have shown Covid-19 symptoms.
The Centre has separately begun the process of blacklisting about 250 foreigners who attended the congregation, allegedly flouting visa rules by claiming to be tourists. Ideally, they should have applied for a religious missionary visa.
Amid reports of Saad going missing, another senior officer of the Delhi Police's crime branch said: "I am not sure if you can say he is absconding. He [Saad] is not at the Markaz. He is also not at any hospital or quarantine facility. We have just started the probe...The police were busy clearing the site and getting it sanitised while also identifying others who may have been infected by the Sars-Cov-2 virus [which causes Covid-19]."
Fuzail Ayyubi, the legal counsel of Jamaat, said Saad was in Delhi, and denied allegations of concealing information. "... [He] will join the investigation when police summon him. We got to know about the FIR from the media reports. The allegation of concealing information is wrong because between March 25 and 28, the police and health teams came inside and took several pilgrims."
Between March 25 (the day a three-week, nationwide lockdown was imposed) and March 28, officials evacuated 39 people showing symptoms of the infection and sent them to hospitals.
A third police officer, who too spoke on the condition of anonymity, said until the night of March 28, Jamaat members tried to hide from health workers who were allowed inside the building.
"The health authorities found about 40 cases of people showing symptoms till then (March 25-28). Nobody volunteered to take the test. Most of the persons who had symptoms were hiding in the rooms above. Some of them had taken medicines to reduce fever. The actual number of people with symptoms was likely over 500. When we realised that they were not cooperating, we decided to visit each room to find those people on the morning of March 29. The main process of evacuation started then," this officer said.
Officials also said they were seeking to interrogate Saad over an audio recording (mentioned in the FIR filed on Tuesday) in which he is purportedly heard asking his followers to flout social distancing guidelines. Jamaat counsel Ayyubi, however, said the allegation about the audio tape was "completely misplaced".
"Before the lockdown, they [Jamaat management] should have sent back the visitors. Instead of making arrangements, the head [Saad] wilfully misled the gathering and asked them to stay put. The case against him and others has been registered under sections of criminal conspiracy and the Epidemic Diseases Act," the third police officer said.
Investigators said Saad allegedly ignored the government's March 13 and March 16 orders banning gatherings of over 200 persons and any form of religious congregations.
The Tablighi Jamaat issued a statement on Tuesday, saying the visitors were stuck at the headquarters because of the lockdown. Its spokesman, Mohammed Shoaib, said the group sent a request for curfew passes to the Delhi government to help the visitors leave the Jamaat headquarters but received no reply.
A Delhi government official said Jamaat reacted late. "The orders to ban gathering were issued more than 10 days before they sent the request for passes [on March 24]. Panic over coronavirus had already gripped Delhi when the first order was issued on March 13. Schools were closed. Holi celebrations were cancelled across the city," the official said on condition of anonymity.
He said despite knowing that foreigners and people from across the country were inside the building, the Jamaat stayed put and "endangered the lives of everyone".
"Their request for passes was kept in abeyance because there was confusion on whether issuance of passes to them would have violated the lockdown norms as their request did not come under essential services [which were allowed to function]. We are still looking at lapses, if any, on the part of government officials," he said.
This official added that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's office asked for an explanation on why the district magistrate and the sub-divisional magistrate did not escalate the matter after meeting Jamaat members inside the building on March 26 over health concerns involving those who attended the gathering earlier in the month.
(With inputs from Sweta Goswami and Vatsala Shrangi)
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