New Delhi: The Delhi Minorities Commission has urged Union home minister Amit Shah to issue instructions to the Delhi police and health officers not to harass members of the Tablighi Jamaat who were not at the Markaz at Nizamuddin when several people contracted COVID-19.It charged that “due to the reckless briefing by government officials and sensational media coverage, general public has come to equate Tablighi people with ordinary Muslims, which is not correct.”A letter sent by DMC chairman Zafarul-Islam Khan and member Kartar Singh Kochhar said “while every Tablighi is a Muslim, not every Muslim is a Tablighi.” It said the incident and the way the government officials and police handled it has “caused harassment of Muslims in both urban and rural areas across the country.”Also read: The Coronavirus Has Morphed Into an Anti-Muslim Virus‘Stop usage of vague words, inconvenience to Muslims’The DMC demanded that “a clear instruction may be issued to all concerned to avoid usage of vague words and descriptions about Tablighi Jamaat which has put millions of Indian Muslims to inconvenience.”The Commission in a recent letter to Shah, copies of which have also been sent by it to all the chief ministers because the harassment of Muslims in the name of Tablighi Jamaat is taking place all over the country”, said there was no conspiracy on part of the people stranded in the Tablighi Markaz or its leadership.“They were innocent victims of this unseen epidemic like anyone else on this planet,” the two office-bearers wrote about those who were present in the Markaz and ended up contracting the virus.‘Section of the Jamaat was insensitive’The DMC, which had earlier urged Delhi Government to stop providing separate data on COVID-19 patients who had attended the Markaz or come in people who attended it, also acknowledged that a section of the Jamaat could have erred. “One section of the Tablighi Markaz leadership was insensitive and it failed to anticipate and realise the impending danger or its scale and hence continued its programmes as per schedule. The other section of Tablighi Jamaat based in Turkman Gate had cancelled all its programmes since early March 2020,” it wrote.The Commission further stated that “the Nizamuddin Tablighi leadership was not alone in this. There are dozens of instances in Delhi and across the country where political leaders and ordinary people showed carelessness and insensitivity even after the announcement of the lockdown.”Also read: Coronavirus Communalism Has Made a Grim Picture for Indian Muslims Grimmer StillThe letter further said that it was correct to evacuate the people stranded at the Tablighi Markaz and to take them to medical facilities and quarantine centres. It was also a correct and a required step to order and search for people who came in contact with these stranded people from any part of the country.However, it added that “this correct campaign took two wrong directions due to insensitive briefing by government officials and sensational media coverage”.‘Every Tablighi made to look like a suspect’One, it pointed out, “every “Tablighi person” anywhere in the country became a suspect and was hunted down and placed under quarantine amid propaganda that they were ‘hiding’ and ;evading’.”Noting that “mere past relationship of someone with Tablighi Jamaat does not make him per se a suspect,” the letter said, “instead, only those who were inside the Tablighi Markaz or visited it or came in contact with such persons outside the Markaz after the epidemic was discovered should be searched and quarantined. People of the Tablighi Jamaat who were not in the Tablighi Markaz, did not visit it during the said period and did not come in contact with any such person, must not be treated as suspects because coronavirus is not Tabligh-specific.”Also Read: Amit Shah’s Politics Has Always Thrived on Hindu-Muslim DivisionsThe Commission lamented that what happened was just the opposite. “But this exactly is happening in many places in the country where Tablighi people are being hunted only because they belong to the Tablighi Jamaat with no proof that they were in the Markaz at the said time or came in contact with anyone who was there at the time,” it said, adding that call detail records (CDR) of people should be obtained to prove their location or contact with someone who was a suspect.‘Tablighi people being hunted down’The DMC letter further said that the approach of the police and administration has “created a totally unnecessary scene across the country as unrelated Tablighi people are being hunted down and quarantined amid unnecessary propaganda and harassment.”This, it said, has caused much hardship and pain to many innocent people. “So much so that an innocent Tablighi person in Himachal Pradesh, who tested negative, committed suicide due to mocking and harassment” and “another in a Delhi village was lynched because he attended a Tablighi event in the far away Bhopal”.The DMC urged the Home Minister to also issue clear instructions to all concerned to avoid usage of vague words and descriptions about Tablighi Jamaat, saying this has “put millions of Indian Muslims to inconvenience.”