A select group of officials from the Police, Revenue and Health Departments have been tasked with the process of finding order in a chaotic environment. They have built manageable categories of the people who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat conference at Nizamuddin in Delhi, in an attempt to first understand the issue and then handle it.
According to sources, the team has split the Delhi conference attendees into four basic categories. In the first category, they have slotted the foreign preachers who had been in Delhi and had come to Tamil Nadu after the conference. Some of them had visited the local mosques, and they were said to have arrived a little earlier than the others. In terms of numbers, this is the smallest group among the Tablighi Jamaat in Tamil Nadu.
The second category comprises a set of people from Tamil Nadu who had gone to Malaysia and Indonesia to attend conferences there, but had returned after those events were called off or cut short. This is a small group, but has more members than the first category of people.
Sources say the third category comprises people from other States who had attended the conference at Nizamuddin Markaz, but had landed in Tamil Nadu and are currently here. This group is roughly the size of the first two groups put together, it is learnt.
The final and the largest category of people is a set of Tamilians who had visited Delhi and returned. They had reportedly attended the last few days of the seminar, and possibly landed in Tamil Nadu between March 21 and 23. Since this was close to the ‘Janata Curfew’ and the subsequent lockdown, it is believed that they may not have had too much time to mingle. Their samples are being tested, and contact tracing of their family and travel mates is on, according to officials.
The Chief Minister’s appeal to people who had attended the Nizamuddin conference to reveal details about themselves seems to have had the desired effect, and many who may have been omitted from a count have now been included. This list has turned out to be distinct from what the special task force had prepared, officials say.
But for this fortunate turn of events, the entire list may have still been in the making.
