COVID-19: Delhi Police Crime Branch all set to question Markaz chief Maulana Saad after grilling his sons

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police Crime Branch will soon question Nizamuddin Markaz chief Maulana Saad Kandhalvi in connection with the FIR against him and his outfit for violating a Centre’s ban on big gatherings while coronavirus lockdown is in force.

According to reports, the Crime Branch had earlier grilled three sons of Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad, who had so far evaded arrest and put himself in home-quarantine. The Delhi Police had earlier issued notices to the Jamaat chief in connection with the gathering organised in Delhi.

At least 17 people, including Saad, have been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder for holding a gathering last month that authorities say led to a big jump in coronavirus infections.

A congregation at Markaz in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi of Tablighi Jamaat became an epicentre of coronavirus spread, with several who attended the event testing positive and infecting hundreds of others across the country.

The headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat group in a cramped corner of Delhi was sealed and thousands of followers, including some from Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, were taken into quarantine after it emerged they had attended meetings there in mid-March.

Police initially filed a case against Muhammad Saad Kandhalvi, the chief of the centre, for violating a ban on big gatherings but later invoked the law against culpable homicide.

“Delhi police had filed a first information report earlier against the Tablighi chief, now section 304 has been added," the officer said, referring to culpable homicide in the penal code, which carries a maximum punishment of a 10-year prison term.

The Tablighi is one of the world`s biggest Sunni Muslim proselytising organisations with followers in more than 80 countries, promoting a pure form of Islam.

Authorities said at the beginning of the month that a third of the nearly 3,000 coronavirus cases at that time were either people who attended the Tablighi gathering or those who were later exposed to them.

India`s tally of coronavirus infections has since jumped to 12,380, including 414 deaths, as of Thursday. In the coronavirus hotspot of Delhi, 1,080 of its 1,561 cases were linked to the group`s gathering, according to the city government data on Wednesday.

The Tablighi administrators earlier said many of the followers who had visited its offices in Delhi`s historic Nizamuddin quarter were stranded after the government declared a three-week lockdown, and the centre had to offer them shelter.

The Tablighi was also linked to a surge of cases in neighbouring Pakistan where it cancelled a similar gathering, but only at the last minute when thousands had already arrived at premises in the city of Lahore.