A 22-year-old Muslim boy, identified as Mehboob Ali, who had returned to his village in Bawana in northwest Delhi after attending a Tablighi Jamaat conference in Bhopal was allegedly thrashed earlier this week after some people accused him of spreading coronavirus. At least three people have now been arrested in connection with the attack.
The police have confirmed that Mehboob Ali has been admitted to the LNJP Hospital as a COVID-19 suspect. “He is fine and being kept in Corona isolation centre,” the FIR registered in the case read.
It is sufficiently clear from the police FIR that Mehboob Ali was thrashed, not ‘killed’. However, news agency PTI dreamt up that Ali was ‘beaten to death’. Quoting a police officer, PTI reported that the boy was brutally thrashed in the fields and rushed to a hospital by police where he died. Probably the name of the victim did the magic.
The report by PTI falsely claiming that the ‘man was killed’
Hours later PTI wrote that they had erroneously written that Mehboob Ali was dead.
Hours later PTI clarifies
But till then the damages were done. This news was expeditiously picked up by various media houses. Without verifying details, not one but many news agencies picked the false news extended by PTI.
Mehboob Ali, a resident of Harewali village in Bawana, had gone to Bhopal for a Tablighi Jamaat conference, officials said. He was there for 45 days and returned to the national capital in a truck carrying vegetables.
He got off at the Azadpur vegetable market on Sunday where a medical examination was conducted to check for symptoms of coronavirus. He left for his village after that. When he reached there, a rumour spread that he had plans to spread the coronavirus infection.
He was thrashed in the fields by some people and later rushed to a hospital, a senior police official said. He was admitted to the LNJP Hospital in Delhi as a coronavirus suspect. Ali is stable and doing fine at the isolation centre and there are no coronavirus symptoms till date, police said.
The Tablighi Jamaat’s Nizamuddin Markaz has become a hotspot for coronavirus not only in the national capital but also across the country. Therefore, everyone associated it with are considered as high risk cases of COVID-19.
As the country readies itself for the final week of the lockdown, doctors and nurses at Delhi’s GTB Hospital can’t help feel a sense of despair at a group of patients placed under their care. Even as they risk their own well-being and fight the disease at the frontlines, there is another factor none of them was prepared for – religious bigotry.
“It is just so frustrating at times”, says Dr Anjali, who has been tasked with monitoring the quarantined men and women, “we are trained to handle diseases, not unruly patients. We feel completely helpless.”
Dr Anjali working at GTB Hospital
After the COVID-19 cluster at the Nizamuddin Markaz came to light on the 29th of March, the members of the Tablighi Jamat, the organization that held its congregation at Nizamuddin, have come under increasing criticism. Members of the mostly-male, ultra-orthodox organization have been criticized for not being co-operative, refusing to take medication, not following instructions of doctors, and intentionally indulging in risky behaviour that may further the spread of the virus. On Thursday, images from Hyderabad’s Gandhi hospital went viral. In these images, a group of Jamat men – who’d been put in under quarantine in an isolation ward – can be seen defying distancing norms and praying together. The next day, authorities in Ghaziabad district of U.P. had to file an F.I.R after female nurses accused some among the quarantined Jamat men of “making obscene gestures” and moving around the wards with their clothes off. The U.P. Health Department later ordered that only male nursing staff attend to the Jamat members.
While those quarantined at Delhi’s G.T.B. hospital have not misbehaved with the staff, they remain unresponsive to the doctors’ repeated requests for co-operation. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, another doctor says, “When the Jamat members arrived, I was on duty. With a colleague, I immediately went to each room to collect their travel history. Unfortunately, some of them tried to hide their histories, while others would not tell us all their symptoms. When we tried to take nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs, they did not co-operate, and many were seen roaming around in the corridor.”
A member of the nursing staff, who was on duty in one of the wards, says, “Despite being given clear instructions to observe social distancing, they were seen performing the namaaz together again and again. They also refused to wear the masks that were given to them.”
Image 2: Staff at the GTB Hospital allege that Jamat members refused to follow instructions to physically distance, often ignoring doctors and nurses who would speak to them.
The Markaz of Nizamuddin has emerged as one of the most potent epicentres of the COVID19 outbreak in India. What makes this place particularly dangerous is that it housed visiting preachers from various Central Asian and South-East Asian countries, who carried the virus with them. Later, infected members travelled all over the country for preaching work, spreading infection in their wake.
After the news of the hotspot broke, almost every state began large scale operations to trace and quarantine members of Jamat who’d entered its boundaries. States ranging from Manipur in the North East, to Goa on the Western Coast have been forced to re-allocate a significant portion of their resources into the work of contact tracing and quarantining Jamat members. A significant challenge to this effort remains the seeds of mistrust sown towards healthcare workers. On Friday, healthcare workers in Indore were assaulted while they conducted a door-to-door assessment of suspected neighbourhoods. On the same day, police in Uttar Pradesh’s Kannauj were assaulted after they tried to shut down a mosque where a crowd had gathered for Friday prayers.
Despite the difficulties, doctors at G.T.B Hospital stay optimistic. “This is an unprecedented situation for all of us. The entire country came together and thanked us for doing what we do” says Dr Anjali, “and that gives you strength. When you see the Prime Minister himself thank you on national television when you see people clap and cheer for you, that gives you the determination to not let such small challenges stand in your way.”
Ever since the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak hit the world, its origin China has been under the cloud for its role in the pandemic. China had misled the world about the severity of the virus in the beginning, which led to the widespread distribution of the virus across the world, and now Chinese numbers of COVID-19 infections have come under question.
While the coronavirus continues an uncontrolled run across Europe and North America, China controlled it well by March, according to data released by the Communist govt in the country. Recently, it had emerged that number asymptomatic Coronavirus positive persons were not included the official data of the pandemic released by the govt. And now an analysis by The Economist shows that the Coronavirus data of China has close relations with political decision in the country.
According to the analysis done by The Economist, two peculiar trends are seen in the Chinese Coronavirus data. First, the data are highly volatile, across different provinces, the numbers of positive cases jump abruptly one day and then come down heavily the next day. Although such irregularity is seen with most countries, it is seen more frequently in the case of China. This suggests on some days, positive cases which were not reported earlier were added to the official data, and those days saw a huge jump in the number of cases.
On 24th March, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang had warned local officials not to hide new coronavirus cases, after no cases of local transmission was reported in the country for several days. Li, the country’s second-in-command, urged local governments Monday to “seek truth from facts” and be “open and transparent” in releasing information on the epidemic. This proves that local authorities were under-reporting new cases of Covid-19, and they were forced to add those numbers on the orders of the central leadership later.
The second trend noticed by the Economist study shows that each incident of spike in new cases is related to some important political decisions in the respective provinces. For example, the Hubei province, the epicentre of the pandemic, saw 27% increase in new infections on 9 February, and the rise was 20% and 22% on the next two days. But on 12th February, the number of new Covid-19 cases in the province went up by a whopping 742%. Although Chinese govt had said that this had happened due to revisions to the government’s methodology for counting cases, those revisions were made a week earlier. More importantly the spike in cases on 12th February happened just a day after the Communist party chiefs of Hubei province and Wuhan city were sacked.
Similar trend was seen in other regions also. On January 27th officials in Zhejiang province announced the opening of 335 clinics and a 1,000-bed hospital to accommodate a surge of Covid-19 patients. The next day, new cases nearly tripled to 123, before declining sharply in the next few days. The new cases in Shandong province saw a spike on 20 February after the chief of the provincial justice department was sacked, and they came back to previous levels.
While most incidents of sharp rise in new cases happened just after important decisions were made in the respective regions, on one day this happened on national level. On February 3rd, almost every Coronavirus-hit province saw a massive jump in the number of new cases. On the very same day, Chinese premier Xi Jinping had asked the authorities battling the virus to “face up to existing problems” and “release authoritative information in a timely manner”.
These co-incidences suggest that all is not well with the Coronavirus data released by China, just as their information on the virus was not correct, there is doubt over their data also.
In a shocking revelation, it is being alleged that three unidentified people who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi may have used identities of tribals to illegally obtain SIM cards.
According to Jagran report, three Muslims from Lohardaga had visited Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in New Delhi in March. The investigations have raised suspicions that Muslims who had travelled to attend Markaz may have used SIM cards, which were registered in the names of tribals.
As a special investigative team of the Jagran looked into the details of the matter, it was found out that the three people in whose the mobile numbers are registered have never been to Delhi. Interestingly, two of these mobile numbers are now out of reach while one number is being used in Delhi.
With this, new suspicions are being raised whether Tablighi Jamaat attendees of Lohardaga had illegally obtained SIM cards in the name of tribals to hide their identity during their travel to Delhi to attend the Markaz.
The police are now investigating the matter regarding whether people who travelled to Markaz used fake SIM cards obtained using the identities of tribals.
Tablighi Jamaat at the Nizamuddin Markaz held earlier in March has turned out to be a hot spot for coronavirus positive cases. The role of the Tablighi Jamaat in the spreading of the Wuhan Coronavirus in India came to light when thousands of Jamaatis were found holed up in the Markaz Nizamuddin in violation of all guidelines and orders.
Subsequently, numerous people across numerous states of India who had attended the Islamic event at the Markaz Nizamuddin tested positive for the virus.
The Child helpline number in India received as many as 92,000 distress calls asking for protection against domestic violence and abuse in the first 11 days of the nationwide lockdown period, imposed to contain the spread of the deadly Wuhan coronavirus in the country.
The data was reportedly shared in an online outreach event organised by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, led by Smriti Irani. The outreach programme was organised to orient functionaries and organisers working with vulnerable groups.
Harleen Walia, deputy director of Childline India revealed that the CHILDLINE 1098 helpline for children had received 3.07 lakhs calls in between March 20-31, the first week of lockdown, and 30% of these calls (92,105 calls in total) have pleaded protection from abuse and violence against children, as per reports.
Harleen Walia further added that the number of calls increased by 50% after the mandatory 21 days lockdown was announced on March 24.
This data was shared on Tuesday during an orientation workshop for district-based child protection units and attended by senior Women and Child Development ministry officials.
India has been put under complete lockdown, a mass effort to save lives from the deadly infection, but what is being seen as a downside of this lockdown is that it has left the vulnerable group at risk. Even though we seem to have progressed, this confinement is throwing up the ‘real’ mindsets of partners.
The National Commission for Women (NCW), which receives complaints of domestic violence from across the country, has recorded more than twofold rise in gender-based violence in the national Coronavirus lockdown period. The total complaints from women rose from 116 in the first week of March (March 2-8), to 257 in the final week (March 23-April 2), including 69 domestic violence complaints by the women.
“Domestic violence cases have doubled than what it was before the lockdown. The cases of domestic violence are high in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Punjab,” says NCW chief Rekha Sharma.
The main reason for the rise of domestic violence, she says, is that the men are at home and they are taking out their frustration on women and they refuse to participate in domestic work. Women are also confined within the four walls of the house and they cannot share their grief with anybody.
The victims are also scared of complaining to the police as they fear repurcussions. Sharma says: “Most of the complaints are coming via email. My team is working 24/7 and we are shifting the victims to hostels or help them to reach their parents’ home.”
Complaints of rape or attempted rape have also risen sharply from two to 13, while cases of domestic violence have increased from 30 to 69 over the same comparative period.
Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee(DSGMC) has offered its functional 50 bedded Guru Harkishan Hospital and the six-story 500 bedded hospital building Gurudwara Bala sahib for isolation or treatment of Wuhan coronavirus positive or suspected cases to the state government of Delhi, says DSGMC President Manjinder S Sirsa.
Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) offers its functional 50 bedded Guru Harkrishan Hospital&6-storey 500 bedded hospital building for isolation/treatment of #COVID19 positive/suspected patients at Gurdwara Bala Sahib to Delhi Govt: Manjinder S Sirsa, President DSGMC pic.twitter.com/hfjho9uVvB
In a letter to Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, DSGMC president Manjinder Singh Sirsa said the Delhi government is developing infrastructure including hospitals to face an exponential rise in COVID-19 patients and converting even hotels and banquet halls into health facilities for the purpose of isolation treatment and quarantine.
“It is also stated that DSGMC is running many polyclinics and hospitals to deliver quality health care to the needy population of Delhi for the past several decades. Guru Harkrishan hospital, a fifty bedded multidisciplinary hospital with an intensive care unit is also functional at Gurudwara Bala Sahib.”
The letter added further, “A 500-bedded six-storey building of Guru Harkrishan Institute of Medical Science located in the 11-acre compound of Gurdwara Bala Sahib in Sunlight colony. The use of the proposed state of the art health facility to fill the existing gap between the health resource available and required will work in the nation’s interest.
The letter further added that the coronavirus crisis is a tough time for humanity and we all need to work together.
Earlier today, 20 hotspots of coronavirus spread were sealed off in Delhi. Out of the 669 coronavirus cases in Delhi, 426 are linked to the Tablighi Jamaat event alone. The Delhi government has made masks mandatory for people when venturing out.
The shocking act of discrimination against minorities continues unabated in the terrorist state of Pakistan even at the time of global epidemic as certain families belonging to the religious minority communities have been denied ration.
According to the reports, the religious minorities, especially Hindus and Christians, are facing extreme discrimination in Pakistan during the ongoing global pandemic coronavirus crisis. It is being alleged Hindus and Christian minorities are not being given food supplies by authorities, claiming that they are meant for the Muslims.
In one such incident, while distributing ration to needy people in Karachi’s Korangi area, inhabitant Christians were allegedly forced to recite “Kalma Tayyaba” as a pre-condition to get ration from the local administration. As they refused, the Christians were denied the required essentials.
“Kalma Tayyaba” is the basic tenet of Islam. Reciting the holy verse is mandatory for Muslims and anyone embracing or being converted to Islam recites Kalma Tayyaba.
“They did not give us ration and said that you will get ration only after you will chant ‘La Ilaha Il-Allah Muhammadur Rasul Allah’. We told them that we will not chant. They denied us ration and asked us to leave,” said a Christian woman.
Hindus and Christians have allegedly been informed that they are not eligible for food supplies since it was only meant for Muslims. Hindus in Liyari, Sachal Ghoth and other parts of Karachi as well as all over Sindh are reportedly being denied a share in government food and rations as they belong to minority communities.
The Sindh Government had issued orders to local NGOs to distribute ration to poor daily-wage workers and labourers. However, the Hindus and Christians were singled out and denied their fair share of the ration by a Karachi-based NGO, Saylani Welfare Trust.
Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan has sharply increased to 4194 while the death toll has reached 60.
The Government of India has launched a training module “Integrated Government Online Training” (iGOT) for the management of COVID-19. iGOT is a portal available on the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s (MHRD) DIKSHA platform for capacity building of frontline workers in handling the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic efficiently.
The DIKSHA portal has been “retrofitted” to the purpose requested by the Central government’s Empowered Group chaired by Arun Panda, secretary in the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises. This particular group forms a part of the 11 such groups formed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic by the Home Ministry under the Disaster Management Act.
A statement issued by the Department of Personnel and Training says that India faces a significantly higher threat from COVID-19 pandemic. “India’s first line of workers is already engaged in COVID relief and doing commendable job. However, a larger force will be needed to replace the first line and to tackle the exponential or geometric increase in positive COVID cases in the subsequent stages of the pandemic. Accordingly, to take care of the training needs of the frontline workers, the launch of the iGOT platform has been fast-forwarded, and using the MoHRD DIKSHA as a host, has been retro-fitted to the purpose”, the statement says.
The courses of iGOT have been launched for doctors, nurses, paramedics, hygiene workers, technicians, Auxiliary Nursing midwives(ANMs), state government officers, civil defense officers, various police organizations, National Cadet Corps, Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan, National Service Scheme, Indian Red Cross Society, Bharat Scouts, and guides and other volunteers.
The iGOT platform delivers curated, role-specific content, to each learner at their place of work or home and to any device of their choice. The iGOT portal has courses on various subjects like Psychological care of patients with COVID-19, infection prevention through PPE, Quarantine and Isolation, ICU Care and Ventilation Management, Infection Prevention and Control, Laboratory Sample Collection and Testing etc, apart from onboarding training modules for various roles.
The platform will provide the training modules on flexitime and on site basis so that the COVID response can be delivered at scale for the workforce needed to tackle the pandemic. The iGOT platform is customized for the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic and provides a one-stop source for the frontline warriors to learn about critical areas and update their knowledge and capacity.
The portal can be accessed through desktop and mobile phones, making it accessible for all.
As the country’s health workers are doing the commendable job in combatting the virus, this portal came up to build their capacity. However, a large force will be needed to tackle the exponential or geometric increase in the positive Wuhan coronavirus cases in the various stages of the pandemic.
The total number of coronavirus cases in India has reached a mark of 5734, while 166 people have been reported dead. 472 people have been recovered and discharged, as per the Union Health Ministry.
Tablighi Jamaat members were accused of misbehaving with the nurses, taking their pictures and threatening to make them go viral on social media in an insolation centre in Saharsa hospital in Bihar.
As per reports, three suspects of Wuhan Coronavirus infection who attended the Nizamuddin Markaz Tablighi Jamaat were admitted to the isolation center of Saharsa Sadar hospital. As per reports, some members misbehaved with nurses for over an hour. In a video that has gone viral on social media, one can clearly see the Jamaatis misbehaving with nurses.
After the hospital administration informed the district administration, police swung into action. Sadar SDPO Prabhakar Tiwari and Sadar police station in-charge Rakesh Kumar Singh reached the hospital for examination. The nurses on duty had informed the police officer about the incident. The police seized the mobile phone of the accused and warned if the incident is repeated then they will be sent to jail.
After the warning, they started behaving well. Later they tested negative for coronavirus and were discharged on Wednesday from the isolation centre.
Earlier, reports had emerged where Tablighi Jamaat members had misbehaved with in nurses in UP. Some members reportedly walked around naked making lewd gestures at the female healthcare workers. An FIR was also registered against them.
The Coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a mob of activists and what one would call the elite-brigade, who are otherwise occupied with full-time protests, to theorise on what the government should or should not have done to control the spread of the disease. These activists mainly focus on what the government did ‘wrong’, which is pretty much everything per their worldview, that revolves around unbridled hatred for Prime Minister Modi. At the same time, they shield the super-spreaders of Tablighi Jamaat simply because it is their religion that mandated them to defy lockdown, spit and defecate in corridors etc, maintain studios silence when the world takes note and praises the efforts by the Prime Minister to get a handle on the global pandemic and sit at homes, looking pretty, not moving a finger to help the ones they seem so concerned about. One such full-time protestor and part-time actress is Nandita Das.
Speaking to NDTV, Nandita Das recently said in respect to how the Coronavirus lockdown has impacted migrant labourers, that there exists two Indias, one where people are walking miles to get home and food, and the other, where people are wondering where to get their wine from.
While there is nothing wrong with the statement made by Nandita Das per se, as the great divide certainly does exist, considering the source of this statement one can only chuckle and wonder what it takes to be a hypocrite on so many levels, so blatantly and openly.
While Nandita Das likes to fashion herself as a frugal activist who identifies with the poor masses and it her, her statement becomes hypocritical because she is exactly the kind of wine-sipping elite who likes to talk about the poor from the comfort of her own home, curse everyone for their plight and do nothing herself.
Nandita Das’ father, Jatin Das, who is a famous painter, presumably doing very well for himself, was actually squatting in a government flat until he was served an eviction notice. The father of the women who like to talk about the downtrodden was staying in government accommodation illegally for years when originally the flat was only allotted for 3 years.
It is rather interesting that while Nandita Das waxes eloquent on the plight of the poor, she was using the taxpayer’s money to squat in a government property while her family was more than capable of paying for their own accommodation and had no need to leech off public money.
Jatin Das, Nandita Das’ father, was living in the Asian Games village flat for 26 years. He was meant to use it only for 3.
There are indeed two Indias that exist, but what the media or even Nandita Das herself refuses to acknowledge is that these are the people who belong to the category that wonder where their next bottle of wine is going to come from.
While such wine-sipping elites indulge in blatant poverty-porn, the very people who they abuse have been toiling hard to ensure that the poor man gets food on his plate while the country collectively tries to fight the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.
Similar to the RSS, its affiliated organisation, Sewa Bharati, has also been working relentlessly, extending a helping hand to the marginalised at the time of this crisis.
The organisation Sewa Bharati is headquartered in Delhi, from where the relief work is being carried out across the country. From distributing food packets to manufacturing masks at war footing and reaching out and distributing at places facing a scarcity to distributing bed sheets and blankets to providing basic medicines, Sewa Bharati cadres have been in the forefront in extending crucial help to the needy at the time of this pandemic. Moreover, almost 2.10 lakh cadres have been reaching out to the remotest corners of the country in order to extend their assistance.
According to the All India general secretary of ‘Sewa Bharti’, Shravan Kumar, the organization does not see which state are they working in or what is the caste-religion or identity of the person who needs help. He told that the organization is specially engaged in reaching places where even government assistance has not reached.
There are 2.1 lakh volunteers engaged in work across the country under the banner of ‘Sewa Bharati’. The organization has contact with a total of 1200 institutions in India and is working closely with all of them. Together with these 1200 institutions, it is being ensured that no area across the country is missed at the time of this pandemic.
Shravan said that he has direct access to almost 26 lakh people, who are being provided with food by the organisation.
The RSS too stepped in and started helping the authorities. They distributed food, masks and even cleaned the dirty hospitals and quarantine facilities to ensure that the country can fight the pandemic effectively.
Nandita Das is right. There are indeed two Indias. In fact, there are three Indias. One, where the labourers struggle to make ends meet. The other where volunteers like those from the RSS, Sewa Bharati and several good samaritans come forward in the time of pandemic to ensure that those living in the first India are taking care of, and a third India – where people like Nandita Das and her father mooch of government money and then talk about helping the poor and needy.
It is indeed the bane of the country that such hypocrites are considered credible voices by media houses that have a vested interest in projecting the worse about a country of 1.3 billion people, pulling together in solidarity to fight one of the greatest pandemics witnessed by the world.
