Will Guilty Officials Be Punished and will Govt and Media Apologise?
Atithi Devo Bhava [our guest is our god] is the credo of India. But what happened to the foreign nationals who came to India to visit Markaz-e-Tablighi Jamaat in the national capital was very poignantly pointed out by the courts that instead of helping them we lodged them in jails, levelling allegations that they are responsible for violation of travel documents, spreading of virus, etc.
There were 1,640 foreign members of Tablighi Jamaat from 47 countries in India at the time of the Markaz Nizamuddin event, which was made an issue to demonise and vilify them and the whole Muslim community for the spread of coronavirus in the country. Now most of them have been acquitted by the courts. This is a tale of how these guests were made to suffer the agony of spending nearly a year in a foreign land, facing utmost malice, suspicion, hatred, media vilification, bad treatment in jails, and a long court trial before finally being finally exonerated.
Narrating their hellish experiences, 32-year-old Zahedul Islam (Bangladesh) said: “We were kept in rooms that turned into furnaces during the summer.” He arrived in India on January 20 and was acquitted by a Delhi court on December 15. He was at the Tablighi Markaz till March 5, before moving to Mewat. He was detained and kept in two different quarantine centres.
“My mother suffered two brain strokes while I was stuck in India,” he said in a choked voice.
Another foreign visitor from Australia, 39-year-old Mohammad Irfan said, “The government school where we were kept was filthy and we cleaned it ourselves. I could not even grasp what was happening with me.”
Most of them have the same poignant stories to tell which make us bow our heads in shame. They all were being treated badly in jails and detention centres before being released.
In India they did not break the Indian laws as the court judgments observed eloquently.
In August, while quashing the FIRs against 18 foreign Tablighi members, the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court observed, “A political government tries to find the scapegoat when there is a pandemic or calamity and the circumstances show that there is probability that these foreigners were chosen to make them scapegoats….”
A division bench of Justices TV Nalawade and MG Sewlikar also referenced the citizenship law protests that took place across India in December and January, saying there was a “smell of malice to the action taken against these foreigners and Muslims for their alleged activities”.
Justice Nalawade, who wrote the 58-page judgement, said the updated visa manual did not restrict foreigners from visiting religious places and attending usual religious activities.
He further observed, “…even from the record, it cannot be inferred that the foreigners were spreading Islam religion by converting persons of other religion to Islam.”
Earlier in July, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court of Justice Swaminathan also made similar observations on a plea seeking release of 129 foreign Tablighi nationals from different countries who were put in jail by the Tamil Nadu government. The bench said, “Merely because the petitioners (TJs) have contravened visa conditions they cannot be seen as criminals. The situation calls for empathy and understanding. They are yearning to breathe the native air.”
Justice Swaminathan further said, “I hold the continuance of the prosecution amounts to infraction of fundamental right under Article 21 of Constitution and directing their closure alone would secure the ends of justice.”
On December 22, the Patna High Court also quashed the criminal prosecution against 18 foreign nationals associated with Tablighi congregation. The bench of Justice Rajeev Ranjan Prasad in its observation cited absence of any material that could prima facie suggest that these people were involved in religious work.
The Government of India is aware of the fact that the foreign nationals from some of the countries in course of their stay in India are being accommodated in mosques or markaz, Justice Prasad observed on a petition filed by 11 foreign nationals who came to West Bengal from Bangladesh on tourist visa.
While on August 24, a Delhi magistrate’s court could not find prima facie evidence against eight of the accused. The court observed, “None of them were present at the markaz on the relevant period and they had been picked up from different places so as to maliciously prosecute them upon directions from the Ministry of Home Affairs.”
And now in the latest ruling, a Metropolitan Court in Delhi has exonerated other 36 accused, observing that “the prosecution has even failed to prove the disobedience of any of the directions.”
In its 65-page judgment acquitting 36 Tablighi Jamaat members on December 15, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg named five police personnel as well as the sub-divisional magistrate involved in the prosecution of these foreigners who were booked in March.
Defence counsel for them, Senior Advocate Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi told Radiance, “It’s an acceptance of our arguments that we had been saying from the first day that these people had not committed any crime.” The court verdict “reflects the capacity, independence and competence of the Indian lower judiciary,” Ayyubi said. He said still around 200 foreigners are left across Delhi, UP, Bihar and Jharkhand.
The centre has blacklisted 952 foreign nationals, accusing them of contravening emergency rules. Of these over 900 entered into a plea bargain, pleaded guilty and left as they did not want to stand trial in India. But 44 stayed the course. In the process the Muslim community was damned. The comments from BJP leaders, on the social media, and indeed those erupting from the mouths of so-called anchors, are too vile to be repeated again.
In the light of the several courts’ judgments and observations, Muslim organisations and leaders have demanded an apology from the central and state governments.
Even the Bombay High Court also directed that “it is now time to repent this action and take positive steps to repair the damage,” criticising the “scapegoating” of the Tablighi Jamaat.
Jamaat-e- Islami Hind Vice President Mohammad Salim Engineer said both the government and the media owe an apology to Tablighi Jamaat and the Muslim community.
“The communalisation of the pandemic has caused serious damage to communal harmony and even sparked hate crimes against innocent Muslims,” he said, “it has also hurt India’s reputation internationally.”
He also demanded due compensation to the foreign nationals as the court directed in its order.
In the similar vein, former Tamil Nadu MLA and president Manithaneya Makkal Katchi, Prof. M.H. Jawahirullah said, “Modi Government should apologise not only to Tablighi Jamaat but also to several countries whose citizens visited India on a spiritual tour but were arrested and harassed on the pretext of indulging in the act of spreading Covid. The Modi Govt should pay compensation to these foreigners.”
But will the guilty police officials and their political masters, responsible for the agony and harassment of these foreign visitors, be penalised and punished for their actions? they ask.