– Suman Bhattacharyya
The Tablighi Jamaat connection apparently led to the Corona infection in actor and Trinamool Congress MP Nusrat Jahan’s father. He had met Jamaatis who returned from the Nizamuddin Markaz at his Kolkata home and is believed to have acquired the infection from them. On Sunday (April 12) night, the actor’s aged father was admitted to a private hospital in the Phoolbagan police station area, adjacent to Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in Kolkata.
The diabetic senior citizen was brought to the hospital on Sunday night in a critical condition with high fever and severe respiratory complications. He was immediately treated with insulin. However, as the patient carried symptoms of COVID 19 and had the record of coming in close contact with the people of the Tablighi, his fluid samples were collected for a pathological test. The private hospital, which claims to have the infrastructure for diagnosing COVID 19 confirmed the patient as having tested positive. The pathological report has been sent to Swasthya Bhavan, the medical and public health headquarters in West Bengal.
Nusrat Jahan had initially claimed her father was suffering from high fever. She denied the respiratory complications he was suffering from. Even after her father was being tested for Corona Virus, she insisted that it was a routine test the hospital was doing on all its patients. She also vouched that her father had no history of foreign travel in the recent past.
The story of his connection with the Jamaatis of Nizamuddin Markaz only took some time to surface. Thereafter, the actor has insisted on another COVID 19 test for her father to assess the level of infection. Freshly taken samples of sputum, nasal swabs, and body fluid was sent to a government laboratory and the results are still awaited.
Keen eyes are watching if the ‘government report’ is significantly different from the initial report of the hospital. But there are no chances to repudiate the fact that the infection has been passed on by some Jamaati contact of the TMC MP’s father. It also points to the TMC-Jamaat nexus in the state.
According to reports, Nusrat Jahan’s mother and sister are now in quarantine.
