Efforts on to repatriate 19 Tablighi Jamaat members to B’desh: Official

Kolkata, August 25

The West Bengal government along with the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Kolkata is working to repatriate 19 Tablighi Jamaat members of the neighbouring country, stuck in the state since the COVID-19 outbreak in March.

According to a senior official in the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission here, they are currently lodged at a safe house near the India-Bangladesh border.

More than 250 members of Tablighi Jamaat-Bangladesh had come to India to attend a religious congregation at Nizamuddin in New Delhi in March, he said.

“Nineteen of them were quartered in Kolkata for quarantine and other official procedures. They were then moved to a safe house near the border. All of them have tested negative for the infection and the process to repatriate them has begun,” he told PTI on the condition of anonymity.

A state government official here has also confirmed the development.

“We are working out the modalities to send these people back to Bangladesh. Talks are on with authorities concerned, including the Union government,” the official said.

The Tablighi Jamaat Markaz (headquarters) in Delhi’s Nizamuddin West had emerged as a coronavirus hotspot in April this year as several people including foreigners, who attended the congregation there during the second week of March, were diagnosed with COVID-19.

Subsequently, hundreds of coronavirus cases in the country were found linked to the religious event. PTI