NEW DELHI: Over 1,700 foreign Tablighi Jamaat workers have been blacklisted by the Home Ministry for violating visa norms for visiting India to attend a gathering at Tablighi Markaz headquarters in Delhi’s Nizamuddin, which has become the largest hotspot for the spread of coronavirus in the country.
25,500 Tablighis and their contacts have been quarantined, Joint Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava said.
During the daily briefing, Srivastava also said that five villages in Haryana have been sealed and the residents quarantined as members of this Islamic organisation had stayed there.
She said that 1,750 foreign-based members of the Jamaat, out of the total 2,083, have been blacklisted.
Sources said a massive exercise is on to trace all the primary and secondary contacts of Tablighi workers and the Delhi Police is assisting all states in tracing the people who could be potential carriers of the virus.
Delhi Police Commissioner S N Shrivastava on Monday met Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and briefed him on the progress of the ongoing probe against the Tablighis.
Authorities have warned of invoking attempt to murder charge and the stringent National Security Act against the participants who fail to report for screening.
According to reports from the states, several participants are yet to show up before authorities. The Kanpur administration gave a ‘last chance’ to those who attended the Tablighi event and those who came in contact with them to report to authorities, warning NSA would be invoked against them if they failed to do so.