Delhi minorities panel demands release of Jamaat members who have spent 28 days in quarantine camps

The Delhi Minorities Commission has demanded that Tablighi Jamaat members who are kept at quarantine camps in the city and have not tested positive for coronavirus be released, as they have completed twice the stipulated quarantine period of 14 days as COVID-19 suspects.

In a letter to Delhi Health minister Satyendar Jain, commission chairman Zafarul Islam Khan and member Kartar Singh Kochhar also claimed that facilities for food and medicines at these camps were poor.

The letter said people brought to quarantine camps from the Tabligh Markaz in Nizamuddin would complete 28 days in isolation on Monday. This is twice the mandatory period of quarantine for COVID-19 suspects, as per guidelines issued by the US and the WHO, it added.

"It will be in the fitness of things that all such people who have spent 28 days in these camps and did not test positive should be allowed to go home or at least allowed to live somewhere else in Delhi while the lockdown continues," the letter read.

The commission claimed in its letter that thousands of such inmates were kept at quarantine camps across Delhi, including in Sultanpuri, Wazirabad, Narela and Dwarka.

Scores of persons were found infected with coronavirus who were among the participants of a religious gathering at the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in March. Hundreds of others rescued from there were sent to different quarantine centres.

The letter pointed that Ramzan has begun and most of the Muslim inmates in these camps were fasting and finding it "harsh" to cope with the prevailing conditions there.

Further, the commission has issued two notices to the district magistrate of North Delhi over the condition of a quarantine camp at the Police Training School in Wazirabad.