Mumbai: Court relief for 12 Indonesians arrested after Tablighi event

MUMBAI: In a relief for the 12 Indonesian Tablighi Jamaat delegates stranded in the city for six months, a magistrate court on Tuesday discharged them in a case investigated by the Bandra police. The foreign nationals had been booked under various charges as they had attended the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in the Nizamuddin Markaz mosque in Delhi which was perceived to be a coronavirus super-spreader event in March.
The delegates were present for the hearing. “All accused stand discharged,” metropolitan magistrate JY Ghule said. A copy of the detailed order is likely to be made available later this week.
In August, police submitted a chargesheet against the delegates and dropped the more serious sections under IPC sections 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 307 (attempt to murder). The less serious charges under the Epidemic Diseases Act, the Foreigners Act, and Disaster Management Act were, however, retained.
On September 8, the Tablighi delegates moved the magistrate court seeking discharge from the case. In the plea submitted and argued by advocate Ishrat Khan, the court was told only two of them had tested positive for coronavirus and they subsequently tested negative. “The alleged acts of use of forged passports, invalid entry into India, disobeying the orders or advisories issued by the government of Maharashtra in India are false, bogus and baseless,” the plea said.
Khan submitted that between February 29 and March 6, the delegates had come to the country with valid passports and visas. They left Delhi by train and arrived in Mumbai on March 7. While two were granted anticipatory bail, the remaining were arrested and subsequently granted bail.
The plea also said they had only been implicated on the grounds that they are foreigners and were present in the country when the lockdown was announced. “Their mere presence in Delhi and then in Mumbai is not sufficient evidence to implicate the applicants. There is neither overt nor covert act attributed to the applicants in the present case,” the plea said.
The discharge plea also cited an earlier order of the Aurangabad bench of Bombay HC quashing the three FIRs against 35 delegates. The division bench had observed, “There was virtual persecution against these foreigners. A political government tries to find the scapegoat when there is pandemic or calamity and the circumstances show there is probability that these foreigners were chosen to make them scapegoats.”
The prosecution had opposed their pleas for discharge. However, the court accepted the defence plea that no case was made out against them.
The passports of the delegates are with the police. They will now request their return. They will have to notify the relevant Indian and Indonesian authorities about the order before making their way home.
Recently, the DN Nagar police too dropped the attempt to murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder charges against the 20 foreign Tablighi Jamaat delegates they had booked in two separate cases.
Among the accused are Indonesian and Kyrgyz Republic nationals. Their discharge pleas are pending.