Mumbai: A Mumbai court has acquitted 20 foreign attendees of a Tablighi Jamaat event, who were booked by the city police for allegedly violating prohibitory orders during the coronavirus-enforced lockdown.
Metropolitan Magistrate (Andheri) R.R. Khan acquitted the 20 persons on Monday as the prosecution failed to prove the charges against them. “There is no iota of evidence with prosecution to show any contravention of order by accused persons beyond all shadow of doubt,” the court observed.
Referring to the evidence of two witnesses — cops who probed the cases — the court said neither had an occasion to see the accused together in the form of an assembly.
The accused belonged to two different countries, ten of them are from Indonesia and the other ten are from Kyrgyz Republic. Thus, the Magistrate court passed two separate orders.
The delegates, who had come to India to attend the Tablighi congregation in Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz —it was perceived to be a Covid-spreader event — can return to their home countries after being stranded in Mumbai for over seven months.
The Mumbai police had earlier issued an advisory and warning asking people who had attended the meet at Delhi to come forward, failing which a criminal case would be registered against them. The group failed to come forward but was traced in the first week of April following which a case was registered with the DN Nagar police station.
The group was booked for attempt to murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. They were also booked under Epidemic Diseases Act, the National Disaster Act, Foreign Act and Bombay Police Act.