There has been a remarkable consistency in the conduct exhibited by Tablighi Jamaat members across the country. After spitting on the roads of New Delhi, defecating in open in Narela quarantine centre, spitting on the nurses, doctors and healthcare workers in the quarantine facility, now the spiteful Tablighi Jamaat members in Trichy, who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, have displayed a similar kind of perverse behaviour when they threw their masks away after getting into a heated argument with the hospital staff.

According to a report published in TOI, some of the COVID-19 positive members of the total 36 Tablighi Jamaat members admitted in the Mahatma Gandhi memorial government hospital (MGMGH) demanded to meet the hospital dean Dr K Vanitha to raise their grievances.

However, when they were denied permission to meet the dean, they entered into an altercation with the hospital staff. The hospital administration alleged that some of the patients, knowing fully well that they are suffering from a highly contagious disease, tossed their masks down, dangerously close to a nurse.

The matter was brought to the notice of Assistant Police Commissioner (ACP) Srirangam Range K Ramachandran and later to the Trichy collector S Sivarasu about the malevolent tendencies of the Tablighi Jamaat patients admitted in the hospital.

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In an interview, Collector Sivarasu asserted that he has arranged for the counselling of the coronavirus patients in the hospital. “I have organised a counselling programme for those patients to describe them about the nature of treatment and the necessity for them to cooperate with doctors. They will be clearly informed that they are accountable for the disruption caused to the healthcare workers tending to them,” he said.

T Abdul Raheem, the TMMK Trichy deputy secretary, who was brought in to mediate, stated that the irate Tablighi Jamaat members threw their masks down near a nurse, claiming they are very healthy and they did not need them. The decision of the hospital administration to bring in two elderly women relatives of two positive coronavirus patients to the hospital sparked off the protest from the Tablighi Jamaat members.

The Jamaat members had demanded that since both of them were senior citizens and there was no one take care of them in the hospital, they should be instead home quarantined, Raheem said. “I have pacified them and they have agreed to cooperate with the doctors following which the elderly women were brought to the hospital this afternoon,” Raheem said.

The role of Tablighi Jamaat in spreading the coronavirus came to the fore when 10 members who had attended the congregation organised by the orthodox Islamic organisation in Markaz Nizamuddin in mid-March tested positive. Tablighi Jamaat has fast emerged as the raging hotspot of the Wuhan Coronavirus after cases of positive coronavirus who had attended the event were registered from numerous states of India. Muslim clerics of Tablighi Jamaat had organised a congregation in violation of the government’s lockdown orders, providing a conducive environment for the novel coronavirus to proliferate. As per conservative estimates, the congregation organised by Tablighi Jamaat was attended by more than 2000 people, both from several parts of the country as well as from abroad. It was a herculean task for the law enforcement agencies to trace down the event attendees, however, many are still on the run and have refused to come out.