Markaz put Assam on a time bomb

Assam, an oasis amidst the worldwide Coronavirus crisis, suddenly finds itself sitting on a volcano of Corona eruption as nearly 450 Muslim religious preachers attended the Corona infested Markaz congregation of Nizamuddin and many of them have returned home and in the process of spread the virus in Assam.

Only one person, father of 10 children, has been detected positive while Government has home quarantined around 130 in various districts of Assam as doctors are handling the surge of patients. Overnight 13 such cases self-reported at Guwahati Medical College Hospital(GMCH) and hundred more are expected to report.

A 216 member contingent from Assam was there in the two-day congregation but besides that, there were also about 250 others from Assam who were also in that six-story mosque sharing beds with thousands of other devotees who were carrying the virus.

This incident plunged Assam into a serious crisis and the right-wing elements used social media to polarise the society further.  The religious congregation took place despite a warning by Delhi Police.

However, the list has at least a dozen name of Hindus who neither went to the mosque nor had gone to the areas. The list also included the phone number of a Delhi based Assamese journalists who had not gone to the Nizamuddin area for the past two years, he only crosses the Nizamuddin fly over every day while travelling to his office.

On the other hand, Muslim devotees from all the districts of Assam had gone there for religious teaching. According to a video which became viral in the Social Media, a youth from Golaghat claimed that there were about 400 from Assam and none could return due to lockdown.

But it was apparent that the Mosque was the hotspot of Corona Virus since the end of January it was spreading the virus through various religious visitors and tourists.

Assam's first patient had also infected himself from the Nizamuddin mosque. He came back to Assam by Rajdhani Express, stayed a few nights at Guwahati and then left for home at Badarpur leaving a behind a trail, the consequences of whom would be catastrophic in the next few days.

From this morning(Wednesday) medical team has started contacting each of the people whose name appeared in the list and the administration had developed separate teams to trace the people and do the contact tracing.