Coronavirus: SC seeks Centre's response on plea for evacuating 850 pilgrims from Iran

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court asked the government what it intends to do to help 800-odd Indian pilgrims trapped in coronavirushit Iran. The intervention came as the court sat on Friday to hear matters of urgency in keeping with a statement issued on the previous night that it would continue working despite the 21-day nationwide lockdown.

Iran is among the countries worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Indians trapped there are mostly Shia Muslim pilgrims from the city of Qom. Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant issued notices to the government after hearing a plea through videoconferencing and asked the government to explain what it intends to do in the case.

The court the listed the case for further hearing on Monday. The public interest litigation, filed on behalf of Mustafa MH through advocate Ashish Virmani, claimed that there were 800 such pilgrims, most of them from not too affluent families, stuck in Iran without any food supplies or health facilities. They were expected to return two weeks ago. Of them, 250 may be corona positive, the petition said and expressed the fear that the disease might affect all the others in the group. The petition demanded their immediate evacuation.


The petition said that the pilgrims had been accommodated in hotel rooms in groups of four-five. “It is extremely important to note that the situation of spread of corona is extremely critical in Iran. In fact, there may be as many as 250 people within the group of the aforesaid pilgrims who could be positive for corona. In such a situation, accommodating persons together is a serious health hazard and could lead to disastrous consequences for such pilgrims,” it said.

Two of them have already died, a Ladakh resident claimed, though there was no proof of whether they had died from coronavirus. The petition has made the Union health and external affairs ministry parties to the case. The petitioner said that he had already submitted a representation on March 9 to the external affairs ministry. After that the government did step in and evacuated about 389 people including students and also contacted the pilgrims and had them tested too. But since then nothing more has been done, it said.