The Delhi government on Wednesday evacuated 2,361 people found in the Nizamuddin Markaz and the premises were vacated after a 36-hour effort by medical staff, the administration, police and transport staff, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said. Of these, 617 have been sent to hospitals and the rest have been put in quarantine.
The Nizamuddin Markaz and the area around it is being sanitised by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, ANI reported.
Several cases of Covid-19 in Delhi as well as in other states have been traced to the congregation, which thousands attended. As many as seven people – one from Kashmir and six from Telangana, died of Covid-19 in the days following the congregation.
The Centre has declared the Markaz a coronavirus hotspot. So far, 91 people who were among the attendees at the programme and their contacts, have tested positive for the virus. The highest number, 50, was detected in Tamil Nadu.
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As many as 60 people from Pune who visited the event were quarantined on Tuesday. District Collector Naval Kishore Ram said the total number of people from Pune who attended the event is over 130, but many of them are untraceable.
The Jaunpur administration in Uttar Pradesh have quarantined about 50 people who attended a religious congregation in Nizamuddin. Thirty-four Gautam Buddh Nagar residents, who have shown no symptoms of coronavirus yet, were also home quarantined as a precautionary measure because they attended the event.
Earlier in the day, the Delhi Police registered a first information report against Tablighi Jamaat preacher Maulana Saad and others members of the outfit under Section 3 of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, for organising the congregation amid the coronavirus outbreak. The Delhi government had filed a case against the Markaz administration on Monday.
As Scroll.in reported previously, thousands of Indians and hundreds of foreigners had attended the conference that took place on March 9 and 10 in the densely populated Nizamuddin area. Ten of the 17 confirmed cases in Tamil Nadu on March 30 were also of people who had participated in the congregation.
The conference was organised by the Tablighi Jamaat preachers at the Alami Markaz Banglewali Masjid in Delhi. An Islamic evangelical organisation, the Jamaat, an offshoot of the Deobandi movement, has its presence in several parts of India and countries in South Asia and South-East Asia.
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