190 Tablighi jamaat meet attendees traced in HP, quarantine: DGP

A total of 190 people from Himachal, who attended an Islamic discourse at a Nizamuddin mosque in New Delhi along with thousands others including hundreds of foreigners, many of them suspected corona-positive, last month have been traced and quarantined in the state, said police chief on Thursday.

HP Director General of Police Sitaram Mardi also appealed to Muslims not to visit mosques to offer namaz and do it at their homes.

Mardi said a total of 190 people who returned to the state after attending the Tablighi Jamaat meet in Nizamuddin have been traced so far and quarantined.

A total of 167 such people were traced and quarantined in the state earlier on Wednesday.

The DGP said they were identified and quarantined in different districts of the state.

The highest number of 73 people were quarantined in Baddi, followed by 35 each in Una and Sirmaur, 23 in Shimla, 10 each in Kangra and Chamba and four in Mandi.

Besides seventeen persons from HP who attended the congregation have been quarantined in Delhi itself.

The DGP urged the Muslims to hold Friday prayers in their homes instead of in mosques.

"It is our fundamental duty under Article 51 (a) (h) of our Constitution to develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform," he said.

The DGP added that the 11 Tablighi Jamaat members against whom a first information report was registered at Nerwa police station in Shimla district on Wednesday had not attended the congregation at Nizamuddin.

They had come from Misarwala village located in Paonta Sahib Tehsil of Sirmaur district, he added.