Delhi: Phone Records Of 2,000 Tablighi Jamaat Attendees To Be Tracked To Locate, Seal Areas They Visited 

Delhi Chief Minister (CM) Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday (7 April) said the government will track about 2,000 mobile phones of those who attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation to locate the areas they had visited during their stay in Nizamuddin, reported Hindustan Times.

The located areas will then be marked as containment zones and sealed, added the CM while addressing the media.

“Now, monitoring has to be stepped up at the hot spots. For instance, the Markaz in Nizamuddin (the venue of the Tablighi Jamaat congregations). We have provided around 2,000 phone numbers of individuals who participated in the Jamaat. We have to know areas they visited during their stay in the building and the people they came in contact with. All such areas will be sealed,” he said while announcing the 5T plan to combat COVID-19 in the national capital.

Delhi, currently, has two cluster transmission hotspots -- Dilshad Garden and Nizamuddin --which have been marked as containment zones. Besides these two localities, a slum in south Moti Bagh has also been sealed for movement in or out of the area, is yet to be officially declared as a containment zone.

Marked containment zones undergo strict surveillance including restricting people from stepping out of their houses, regular spraying of disinfectants, constant visit by health officials to check for symptoms and delivery of essentials by government staff.

“For tracking, we have started taking the help of the police. So far, we have provided them with 27,702 phone numbers to check possible violation of quarantine norms,” added CM Kejriwal.

According to the report, 176 FIRs have so far been registered based on mobile records for violating quarantine norms.

The report also quotes a Delhi police official with anonymity, who said the police were working with Delhi government and central intelligence agencies in order to find mobile records and track travel history of the quarantined individuals.

“The Delhi government has been regularly giving us the contact details of home-quarantined persons. Based on that, we are checking for the violation of the home quarantine regulations. Separately, we also have our own database of those who were evacuated from the Markaz. Using that, we are checking for people they were in contact with during their stay in Delhi. We have got the records from the register of the Markaz. At the Central government level, the agencies are helping with contact details of Tablighi Jamaat participants from other states, who were in Delhi last month but left before the evacuation started,” the officer said.

The capital has so far reported seven deaths, while number of total confirms cases has mounted upto 576, including 333 linked to Tablighi Jamaat event.