A tragic communal attack has been reported from Uttar Pradesh’s Mahoba district on Monday amid the deadly coronavirus attack that has kept the entire nation locked down for 3 weeks and will be extended for two more weeks.
In a written complaint to the authorities, five vegetable sellers in Mahoba district said they were ‘abused’ and ‘stopped’ from selling vegetables because they are Muslims.
However, the corona attack had already taken the “communal colour” when some coronavirus positive Muslim men attended a religious gathering at Delhi’s Markaz Mosque. The gathering organized by Tablighi Jamaat was attended by many Muslim men from India as well as other countries. Further the virus spread on their return to their native places.
It was reported that a major chunk of the coronavirus positive cases in India is from the Markaz event itself.
The Mahoba incident has also got its roots to hatred spread after the Tablighi Jamaat event as one of the vendors told NDTV that the group accused them of spreading coronavirus and said they were members of Tablighi Jamaat.
As per the complaint, the incident is of April 11 when the complainants had gone to some villages to sell vegetables. They told that scores of people were buying from them but things got off-track when a group of men asked the buyers not to purchase vegetables as they were Muslims.
They alleged that they were abused and even asked to leave the village.
“We had gone to a village to sell vegetables. Over 100 people came to buy in the 15 minutes we were there. About 10-15 people had already bought from us. Then some other people came and said ‘these people are Muslims don’t buy from them’,” NDTV quoted Mohammad Shamim, one of the vendors as saying.
“The vegetables we had sold were returned to us. For two days we have not stepped out. Those men were saying we were Muslims and had images of the crescent moon (Islamic symbol) on our vehicles. They also claimed we were members of the Jamaat and were spreading coronavirus,” he added.
The Union Health Ministry had itself said last week during a press conference that a third of coronavirus cases in the country were linked to the religious gathering organized by Tablighi Jamaat.
Ministry had said such cases have emerged in 17 states and legal action were taken against the attendees.
This story first appeared on thestatesman.com