Assam: Foreigners Tribunal Member Sends Donation to Govt for COVID-19, Urges Not to Aid Tablighi Jamaat Attendees

Baksa, April 11, 2020:

As a testimony to the communal virus that is sweeping across the country in the midst of a pandemic, Kamalesh Kumar Gupta, a foreigners' tribunal member from Baksa writing to the Assam Health Minister about his "contribution", has urged the officials not to spend the money on the attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi.

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In the note undersigned by the official, which he sent of behalf of the members, attached members, and staffs of the foreigners tribunal of Assam, Gupta wrote, "Our only prayer is that the help may not be extended to the members of Violators Tablighi Jamaat, Jehadi and Jahil. Kindly accept our donations as above for saving the humanity from the clutches of COVID-19 pandemic." Interestingly, Gupta himself donated a sum of Rs 5,000.

The request of the official to not extend aid to members of the Tablighi Jammat bears extra significance as 28 of the 29 COVID-19 positive patients have links to the Nizamuddin Markaz congregation. One of them, a 65-year-old from Hailakandi district, breathed his last in the wee hours of April 10.

Soon after this note was leaked to certain sections of the media, it caused a hue-and-cry for its openly discriminatory nature.

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Azizur Rahman, the chief of the minority student body AAMSU, has lashed out against at Gupta and demanded that he be punished. Talking to Inside Northeast earlier today, Rahman said, "Being a Government official, no one should have a mentality like this. At any cost, we condemn this incident wholeheartedly. This is a serious affront, we condemn it, and firmly believe that the Government should take action. He is a judicial officer, and sadly, one cannot expect justice from such a character. They should remove such people from their positions.

The student leader has further expressed that there is an attempt to "communalize" the coronavirus. "In the wake of the Markaz congregation, people are being looked at through the lens of religion. Perhaps even the Government is looking at patients as patients, but the person who wrote this letter to the Health Minister is seeing the persons as Hindu or Muslim and not as a person. Such people should be punished as per the existing norms of law for creating communal disharmony", Rahman said.

Notably, although many attending the Jammat, including several from the Northeast Indian states have been infected by preachers who had flown in from other countries, it has been seen that many in India have completely turned their backs against them. There has been an attempt to communalize the issue, many experts have opined. A prominent news network was even called out by the Government for claiming that 11 Jamaat attendees from Arunachal had tested positive for the virus. In reality, only 1 Markaz attendee has tested positive for the new coronavirus in the frontier state.

At the same time, it has come to light Jamaat attendees are not fully cooperating, and some have been accused of "hiding" their travel history.

At the same time, a prominent mosque in Guwahati city has been declared as a containment zone after it was discovered by authorities that 3 Jamatees who detected positive for the virus later on had attended an event there. Assam Health and Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the media that although it was not earlier established that all three of the patients had visited the mosque, it was later ascertained that they all had spent time there in the recent past.

“They did not tell us in the beginning that a meeting was also held at the Masjid. Today, the police investigated and informed us that on 12th, 100 people had gathered for an event. The event was attended by some locals and Markaz attendees", Sarma said.

Some from the state of Assam who had attended the congregation are yet to be tracked down despite numerous appeals from the administration to check in at the nearest health centre.

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