Although the Coronavirus has affected about 150 million people in the world since 2020, the past 11 days have seen the worst kind of virus spread and deaths in India, where they have been recording (apparently underreporting) 340,000 to 400,000 cases, and about 5,500 deaths, every day breaking all previous world records of infection rates.
Help from other countries has already started, with transporters from China and other places carrying oxygen cylinders and other hospital equipment that has become increasingly scarce to India. China has also offered New Delhi related-equipments to fight Covid-19.
Despite foreign aid, this novel virus has become out of control. Indians have started demanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi resign over what is a clear mishandling of the corona crisis.
Last year, under the guise of coronavirus, Indian fanatic leaders had imposed various kinds of restrictions on the Muslim populatin. Modi’s government and the health ministry had claimed that Muslims are spreading this virus. As a result, Hindu extremists have set off a series of assaults against Muslims across the country with this latest wave of Covid.
Sources in the western media recently reported that “Indian authorities had allegedly linked cases of COVID-19 to Tablighi Jamaat that had held its annual conference in Delhi in early March…Muslims have been beaten up, nearly lynched…attacked in mosques…Hindu extremists are scapegoating the country’s entire Muslim population for deliberately spreading the virus through “corona jihad”, Indian hospitals segregates Muslim and Hindu coronavirus patients…In what many are calling a case of “apartheid” during a global pandemic…made separate wards for Hindu and Muslim patients. It is a decision of the government.”
While, the Modi regime allowed the devotees to come for mass congregations of Kumbh and the supporters of the massive election rallies in Bengal, including leaders of the Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), came without wearing masks, ignoring the norms of physical distancing, which further multiplied the Covid virus.
However, implementing the similar anti-Muslim policies, Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) has become a special target for the Indian rulers since August 5, 2019 when Indian Parliament revoked articles 35A and 370 of the Constitution, which gave a special status to the disputed territory of the IIOJK.
And deployment of more than 900,000 military troops in the IIOJK, who have martyred thousands of the Kashmiris through brutal tactics-fake encounters—closure of mosques, shortage of foods, medicines for the patients and coronavirus-affected persons prove worst form of India’s state terrorism. Now, more than 18 months have passed. But, Indian strict military lockdown in the IIOJK continues.
