2 absconding Tablighi Jamaat attendees among 4 held in Greater Noida

Two absconding persons, who attended the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi's Nizamuddin last month, were held in Greater Noida and quarantined on Thursday, police said.

Two others, who had provided shelter to the Jamaat attendees, were also arrested and quarantined, they added.

The two Jamaat attendees had absconded from Rajasthan's Alwar, where eight others who had participated in the religious congregation have been arrested.

The Tabligh-e-Jamaat's Markaz (headquarters) in Nizamuddin West has emerged as a hotspot of coronavirus as over 180 people who had attended the religious congregation have tested positive for COVID-19 in Delhi alone, while several other participants across the country are suspected to be infected with the virus.

The police in Gautam Buddh Nagar, adjoining Delhi, in western Uttar Pradesh had received information from their Alwar counterparts about 13 persons coming to the Rajasthan district after attending the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi, a police spokesperson said.

"Eight of those 13 were held from Alwar's Karmala mosque. Five had absconded and the Alwar police traced their location to Greater Noida's Jarcha. Based on the information, the local police launched a hunt for those five persons.

"Two of them -- Mohammad Azam and Danish Khan -- were traced and held while two others, who had provided shelter to them, were also arrested," he added.

The police have come to know that the three other absconding persons are residents of Loni in adjoining Ghaziabad district and the inputs have been shared with the police there, the spokesperson said.

Legal proceedings are underway against those who provided shelter to Azam and Khan, and all four have been quarantined, he added.

The Uttar Pradesh government had invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 last month to combat the pandemic, with the British-era law stipulating legal action against those hiding information about suspected COVID-19 carriers.