THE TAINT OF CORONA

The Tablighi Jamaat bears the brunt of a nationwide hunt. Its followers’ unwitting role in the COVID-19 superspread has made them targets of fear and loathing

- Uday Mahurkar and Sandeep Unnithan

A week into the national lockdown, the 1,400-strong workforce at the Haldia riverine port near Kolkata had been on edge. Incoming merchant ships, port officials feared, would bring in the novel coronavirus. There weren’t enough masks or protective equipment to go around even as the port, being an essential service, continued operations. Then, on April 3, panic set in. Mohammed Bilal, 38, one of the workers at the general cargo berth, tested positive for COVID-19. Operations at eastern India’s largest port complex ground to a halt—eight-port officials who had come in contact with Bilal were home-quarantined; three others, including an employee at the canteen, were confined to a port guesthouse hastily turned into a quarantine facility. Operations at the port, officials say, have been hit since then—only one cargo vessel has been moving in each day instead of the usual six.

Port officials say Bilal was tracked down by ‘government agencies’ and forced to undergo a COVID-19 test by port authorities. This was after it emerged that he was a member of the Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic evangelical movement whose congregation at its global headquarters in Delhi’s Nizamuddin in the first half of March has turned out to be a source of coronavirus infection across the country—from Jammu and Kashmir to Telangana and Rajasthan to Assam.

Bilal was among the estimated 3,500 people who attended the convention at the Jamaat’s Nizamuddin markaz. On return, he resumed work as a berth supervisor at the Haldia Port. Bilal is now being treated for COVID-19 at a government hospital.

When the Delhi police intervened on April 1 to have the