[6] The Tablighi Jamaat has received widespread criticism from the Muslim community for holding the congregation despite a ban on public gatherings being issued by the Government of Delhi on 13 March.
However, in a landmark judgement in August 2020, the Bombay High Court quashed three FIRs against 35 petitioners – 29 of them foreign nationals – who attended a Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi's Nizamuddin in March and travelled from there to different parts of India.
[11] On 16 December 2020, The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of a Delhi Court, Arun Kumar Garg, acquitted the 36 foreign nationals from 14 countries of all the charges levelled against them.
[16] The activities at the Markaz apparently went unhindered until 22 March, when a Janata curfew was observed throughout India at the instance of prime minister Narendra Modi.
On 29 March, the Markaz responded to a notice from the Assistant Commissioner of Police of Lajpat Nagar stating that it had abided by all orders and did not allow any new visitors to enter the premises during the lockdown.
[24] On 16 March, the same day the Delhi order was issued, ten Indonesians who had attended the Aalmi Mashwara event in Nizamuddin were being isolated in Hyderabad.
[33] On 21 March again, Jammu and Kashmir officials informed the Union Health Ministry's control room that a 65-year-old patient, who had been to the Nizamuddin Markaz, had tested positive for COVID-19.
The Union Home Ministry instructed state governments to track down the 824 foreign attendees of the congregation, asking them to screen, quarantine and deport such individuals.
[108][109] On 1 April, the Delhi Police launched an investigation into a leaked audio clip in which Kandhlawi was allegedly heard asking his followers to not be afraid of the COVID-19 pandemic and to gather in mosques to pray.
[124] The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had initiated a preliminary inquiry into the financial affairs of the Jamaat for "dubious cash transactions" and for concealing foreign funding from the government.
[126] The Karnataka High Court placed a 10-year restriction on visiting India on at least nine foreigner Tablighi Jamaat members who had attended the Nizamuddin Markaz event.
[127] On 15 December 2020, the Delhi High Court acquitted 36 foreigners who were detained for allegedly violating COVID-19 norms after the prosecution failed to "prove the presence of accused inside the Markaz premises" and due to the contradictory statements given by the witnesses.
[128] In a letter issued on 19 April, Maulana Saad urged all the Tablighi Jamaat members that had survived COVID-19 to donate their blood plasma for the treatment of others.
[129] Hundreds of recovered Tablighi Jamaat members came forward or expressed willingness to donate their blood plasma in an organised way in Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Delhi.
[143] In Una district in Himachal Pradesh, a man hanged himself due to taunts from fellow villagers for having come in contact with Tablighi Jamaat missionaries.
[144] Several truckers belonging to the Muslim community were allegedly beaten up in Arunachal Pradesh, following which they fled to neighbouring Assam, leaving their vehicles behind, on 5 April 2020.
As a result, Muslim vegetable vendors were barred from selling on the streets at many places by the locals in India, including Delhi,[147] Uttar Pradesh[148][149] and Karnataka, especially Dakshina Kannada.
[168][169][170][171][172] Several media houses were accused for instigating communal Islamophobic sentiments by blaming Indian COVID-19 outbreak on Tablighi Jamaat and spreading misinformation.
[173][174] “The Tablighi Jamaat phase saw hate speech directed against one entire community-Muslims-with very visible impact on the ground such as calls for economic and social boycott and physical violence against Muslims.
The most notorious incident was Arnab Goswami of Republic TV falsely portraying an assembly of migrant workers at Bandra railway station demanding from the government to make arrangements for them to return home during the COVID-19 lockdown as an assembly of Muslims gathered purportedly on the orders of the imam of a local mosque in an attempt to deliberately spread the viral infection among Hindus in an act of biological terrorism.
A complaint was filed with the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) in which Aaj Tak was accused of intending to "develop hatred in the minds of the people against a particular community" during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
On 16 June 2021, the NBSA directed that Aaj Tak's broadcasts be taken down from all Internet platforms that linked a COVID-19 outbreak with Tablighi Jamaat in 2020, citing potential "errors in the figures telecast".
"[181] Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi urged people to not hold the entire Muslim community for the "crime" of one group.
[187] Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani blamed the Tablighi Jamaat event for the sharp rise in the number of coronavirus cases in the state.
[189] On 24 February, US President Donald Trump along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi took part in a road show in Ahmedabad which was attended by thousands of people.
[192] Princess Hend bint Faisal Al-Qasimi, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates, called out a series of "Islamophobic posts" on Twitter which targeted the Tablighi Jamaat's congregation and linked it to the spread of coronavirus in India.
[194] The Uttar Pradesh state government filed an FIR against Siddharth Varadarajan and The Wire for a report on the spread of coronavirus post the Jamaat congregation while recalling UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's plans, as late as 18 March, to proceed with a religious fair at Ayodhya and his flouting of the national lockdown and social distancing norms by taking part in a religious ceremony along with others on 25 March.
More than 4,600 jurists, academics, actors, artists, writers and people from all walks of life endorsed a statement expressing shock at the action of the Uttar Pradesh government.
[195] Editors of the English Wikipedia deleted and later restored an entry about the incident called "2020 Tablighi Jamaat coronavirus hotspot in Delhi", which project co-founder Jimmy Wales said "was incredibly poorly written and had zero sources".
[198][199] A reference book for the second year MBBS students published in 2021 in Maharashtra had been withdrawn after objections were raised over some part its contents that allegedly linked the Tablighi Jamaat's congregation in New Delhi to the outbreak of coronavirus in India.