Saad Audio Clip Asking Tablighi Jamaat to Not Follow Social Distancing was Doctored, Police Probe Suggests

An audio clip of Markaz Nizamuddin head Maulana Saad Kandhalvi, in which he insisted that coronavirus can do no harm to Muslims and asked Tablighi Jamaat members not to follow social distancing norms, is possibly “doctored”, Delhi Police Crime Branch has found during probe.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the police have sent all audio clips as well as the allegedly doctored clip to a forensic science laboratory for further investigation. The audio clip mentioned in the FIR was allegedly ‘stitched together using several audio files’, the report claimed. In the clip, a man can be heard saying “there is no need for social distancing as it is not written about in our religion”.

Saad Kandhalvi and six others were charged with flouting of lockdown orders and booked under the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897 and the Indian Penal Code on March 31. The FIR said that the Jamaat members ‘willfully’ disobeyed the government directives issued to curtail the pandemic.

“No one paid heed to the lawful directions of Delhi Police. Moreover, an audio recording, purportedly by Maulana Saad, was found in circulation on Whatsapp on March 21 in which the speaker was heard asking his followers to defy lockdown and social distancing,” says the FIR, whichof was registered on the basis of a complaint by Mukesh Walia, SHO Hazrat Nizamuddin.

“Around 1,300 devotees from various states as well as foreign countries were found residing on the premises without maintaining social distance. No one was seen following the directions such as the use of facial mask, hand sanitizers etc. Maulana Saad and others and the management of Markaz allowed a huge gathering in a closed area over a protracted period of time, without any semblance of social distancing and no provision of masks and sanitizers and thereby causing a situation where a highly infectious disease such as coronavirus may spread and threaten the lives of inmates and the general public at large,” the FIR says.

Responding to the claims, the Delhi Police on Saturday evening said the report is "not only factually incorrect but seems to be based on wholly unverified sources and purely conjectural imagination".

News18