For two weeks, a strange calm settled on Indian TV news channels. As the novel coronavirus pandemic made inroads into Indian states, primetime slots saw doctors, health experts and policymakers engage with viewers and inform them. The reluctance to question the Narendra Modi government remained, but the high tide of hate-mongering, which had started after the nationwide citizenship law protests, subsided.

On Tuesday, hate returned with a nicotine rush.

Tablighi Jamaat is a transnational Muslim missionary movement headquartered in Delhi’s Nizamuddin West, which is now one of 10 “ hotspots ” of coronavirus in India.

A religious congregation organised by the Jamaat in Delhi between March 13 and 15 became the talk of the town. Eighteen of the 25 cases of coronavirus reported in Delhi on Monday came from South Delhi’s Nizamuddin West, the headquarters of the Jamaat and the site of the congregation.

The event was attended by over 2,000 delegates, with reportedly hundreds of them from outside India. At least eight attendees have already died of coronavirus — six in Telangana, one in Maharashtra, and one in Kashmir. Others who returned to different parts of the country after the event have tested positive for Covid-19, including at least 50 in Tamil Nadu.

Several parts of Nizamuddin West have been quarantined; they have been barricaded and are being monitored by drones. Over 150 people in the area have been hospitalised. The Indian government is tracking at least 1,600 people in India and Southeast Asia who might have attended the congregation.

The Delhi Police has filed an FIR against members of the Jamaat under the Epidemic Disease Act of 1897 and various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including criminal conspiracy.

Perfidy on primetime

India TV broadcast a “ complete inside story ” on the Nizamuddin cluster case. One of the banners it ran during the show was “Corona aaya...Maulana laya”, meaning maulana brings coronavirus. The show also talked about a “superspreader maulana” who transmitted the virus to Kashmir, Jammu, Delhi, Telangana, Saharanpur, Deoband, Meerut, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.