Police stumble upon people attending yet another similar congregation in UP and two of them testing positive

Even as the police felt relieved that they could identify all the participants of Tablighi Jamaat Markaz congregation in Nizamuddin and their primary and secondary contacts from the State, police have stumbled upon people attending yet another similar congregation, around the same time in Uttar Pradesh.

The congregation at Deoband in that State took place simultaneously with that of Nizamuddin. On Sunday, two out of three returnees of Deoband reported positive for COVID-19 in Nirmal district. Top brass in Telangana police told The Hindu that several people from the State went to Deoband from March 9 to 11 at Mohammadi Masjid, just adjacent to the Darul Uloom Islamic University. Incidentally, the dates were just ahead of the event at Nizamuddin, 150 km away from Deoband.

“We have inputs that people from our State, especially from Hyderabad and a few districts in north Telangana have attended the jamaat,” the officer said on condition of anonymity. He said that currently they don’t have information on how many people have attended the jamaat in Deoband, and have to go all over again to identify, trace out and quarantine them.

While many went to Nizammudin and then proceeded to Deoband, some followed the path vice versa. Several people returned directly from there, but some others visited the famous Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan before returning home.

“We need to take inputs from the Nirmal victims on how many people have attended the Markaz prayers with them. Now, it will be a difficult task to trace them as the number is very low when compared to Nizamuddin returnees. The job is tough because they are widely dispersed,” he said.

Meanwhile, another officer said that the number could be less than 100, however, they need to find out. On Saturday, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said the police had traced 1,200 Nizamuddin returnees and referred them to quarantine.