12 more Tablighi Jamaat members traced in Gujarat, quarantined

The four workers from Ahmedabad are originally from Mewat in Haryana, where the Tablighi Jamaat was founded, and the eight from Surat are originally from Andhra Pradesh.

Out of the 84 workers, police said, 83 have been home quarantined. A 70-year-old man from Bhavnagar, who visited Nizamuddin from March 9 to March 11, had died on March 26 and he had resulted positive for COVID-19, police said.

“Our checking is going on. We have identified 12 more workers (eight from Surat and four from Ahmedabad) and informed the union government. The process is tedious since we have to cross check the data given by the Centre, coordinate with other states and registers maintained by the local bodies and then cross check with the information gathered by our special operations group (SOG) teams on ground. But we will identify and track them all,” said Shivanand Jha, Director General of Police (DGP) at a press conference on Thursday.

In a related development, the Navsari district police on Thursday arrested two persons for allegedly spreading inciting messages against a community on social media.

The two arrested were identified as Umakant Rathod (50) and Ratlial Patel (70), both residents of Bharati talkies, Kabilpore in Navsari.

Police said that Ratilal Patel had sent an inciting message on a WhatsApp group which was shared by Umakant Rathod to other groups.

They were charged under sections 153 A ( promoting disharmony, enmity or feelings of hatred between different groups on the grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 505 (1)(c) (publishes or circulates any statement or report containing rumour or alarming news with intent to create or promote, or which is likely to create or promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different reli­gious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communi­ties) and section 188 of the IPC.

According to Gujarat Police, the preliminary investigation has revealed the presence of 38 Tablighi Jamaat workers in Ahmedabad, 12 from Mehsana, 20 workers from Bhavnagar, eight workers from Surat, four from Botad and 2 in Navsari, who attended the Markaz.

The workers in Surat have been quarantined for 14 days at Samras Centre in Veer Narmad South Gujarat University. Sources said that all these eight people had confessed before police, in their statements, that they had attended the meeting.

The police have intensified searches in various pockets of the old city Ahmedabad, in order to find out if there are more Tablighi Jamaat workers who attended the gathering.

Meanwhile, a confidential letter from the special branch of Ahmedabad Police circulated on social media on Thursday, in which all police stations of the city and senior officials were apprised of the inciting message that had gone viral on WhatsApp and directed all police stations to be on alert in order to avert any untoward incident from happening due to the viral message.

Taking cognizance of the confidential letter, Ahmedabad City Police Commissioner Ashish Bhatia said in a press conference, “An inquiry has been launched in this matter and a case has also been lodged by Jamnagar police. Action will be taken against the persons who circulated the message after our inquiry. The special branch had issued the confidential letter as a precautionary one during its investigation and it (the letter) is an internal matter of Ahmedabad police and not related to the public.”

DGP Shivanand Jha also appealed to the public for harmony and said that action will be taken against those who are spreading rumours on social media.