Last month, the Islamabad administration had sealed two mosques in Bhara Kahu area when a number of Tableeghi Jamaat members were tested positive for coronavirus. Abdul Wahab, a resident of Okara, is one of the 13 members who were admitted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Science (PIMS) for treatment. He was discharged from the hospital 20 days later as he was tested negative for coronavirus. But the said Tableeghi Jamaat member is not being allowed to return to his home, where his family has been desperately waits for him.
“The 20 days I spent in medical isolation were not as worse as these last four days that I spent after being discharged from PIMS. I have been recovered from the disease and was tested negative for the virus, but I’m not allowed to go home.” Wahab said.
The young member of the jamaat said that many other recovered patients in his hospital room were allowed to go to their homes. When asked as to why he was not being allowed to travel home and meet his family, Wahab said: “After getting discharged from the hospital, I was stopped at the main entrance of PIMS. Since then I am asking everyone that why I am not allowed to travel back, but no one has given me a satisfactory answer.”
He said that his family was earlier happy that he was being treated at PIMS, but now they are getting worried that he has been stopped like this.
A doctor on duty, on condition of anonymity, told Naya Daur that the recovered patient would not be allowed to leave the premises of the hospital, until his family come personally to pick him up.
Wahab and his fellow member Abdul Momin — who hails from Kyrgyzstan — were brought to PIMS in a critical condition. But now Momin along with other Jamaat members Abdul Wahab, Meharddin, Manzoor Ahmed, Haji Abdul Rasheed, Sadiq, Muhammad Hussain, Akram, Abdullah, Khizar, Rustam, Abdul Malik, Anas and Khursheed have tested negative for Coronavirus.
A follower of the Tableehi Jamaat Ameer Meharddin, when asked about the role of Tableeghi Jamaat members in a surge of coronavirus cases in Islamanad, said that the pandemic has spread all over the world, not only in Islamabad or Pakistan. “People should learn lesson from this God generated pandemic and refrain from wrong practices rather than blaming messengers of God for this coronavirus outbreak,” he added.
Manzoor Ahmed, another Jamaat follower who was quarantined in Bhara Kahu mosque said, “When we started our journey from Lahore, we were unaware about the coronavirus crisis in the country, otherwise our senior members would have cancelled our journey.”
Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat, when contacted, declined that the members were being forcibly stopped and said that the administration was allowing every recovered patient to go back to their homes ‘as per Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)’.