Plea In SC Seeks Curb On Religious & Community Profiling Associated With COVID19

A Petition has been preferred in the Supreme Court seeking intervention of the Top Court for directions to the Central Government for issuance of guidelines to prevent attacks and stigmatisation of certain communities basis religious, racial and caste profiling.

The PIL has been filed by Aanchal Singh, Disha Wadekar & Mohammad Wasim and prays for immediate steps to formulate and thereby stringently enforce an advisory to "Adress Social Stigma" associated with Covid19 so as to ensure that citizens are not denied access to food, water, healthcare and public places on account of the ongoing profiling.

The plea puts forth the avernment that as viruses and bacteria do not discriminate but society does, it leaves an already vulnerable populace which has been ostracised and boycotted at a greater risk.

"The existing social schisms in society are widened during crisis situations like that of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This renders the already vulnerable population of race, religious, caste and sexual minorities, etc to even greater threat of being socially boycotted and ostracised resulting in essential services including healthcare inaccessible to them" reads the petition.

The petition further dives into specific instances of fake news and hate messages surrounding the Tabhlighi Jamaat citing them as "super-spreaders" and outlines the subsequent maligning of the Muslim community as a result. This, the petitioner contends has led to prevalent biases and prejudices which have been community specific and the conquential denial of healthcare facilities to people from the muslim community. Instances of associating people of the North Eastern parts of india with Coronavirus have also been highlighted by the petitioner.

The petitioner(s) states,

"Such racial and community profiling has led to hate and mental abuse with slurs like "mulla", "tablighia", "terrorists" etc for the persons of Muslim community whereas "corona", "virus" for the persons of North-eastern states..... A variety of fake news and rumours related to coronavirus have been spread against Muslims of India under hashtags such as #CORONAJIHAD and #NizamuddinIdiot and hate-filled slurs such as 'COVD terrorists' and 'COVID bioweapons'."

In this backdrop, the petitioner(s) has contended that this profiling is an antithesis to Right to Life, Right to Livelihood and Right to Equality, emanating from the constitution India and requires immediate intervention.

"The loss of life, livelihood and dignity for members of such communities due to social boycott vitiates the guarantees of right to life with dignity and right to livelihood under Articles 21 and 19 of the Constitution of India. This is a matter of grave concern and needs to be addressed forthwith. This kind of social boycott on the grounds 'only' of-religion, race, caste, sex, etc is discriminatory and hence erodes the protection granted under Article 14 of the Constitution of India." the petiton reads.

Additionally, the petitioner(s) has prayed for replacing the words "social distancing" with "physical distancing" or "disease distancing" as the callous use of phrases during the fight against covid19 may have serious consequences of leaving behind a legacy of "untouchability, social boycott and ostracism"

The petition goes on to aver that during this pandemic, it is extremely essential that humanity supersede all religious beliefs and that the Government must take steps to curb the spread of COVID19 for all its citizens and not ignore elements perpetuating hate.

"The State cannot ignore the existence of such fringe elements and therefore should consider the matter of the spreading of such fake news and hate, leading to denial of healthcare and other essential services having severe consequences for a particular community" the petitioner(S) states.

Aanchal Singh, Disha Wadekar & Mohammad Wasim are lawyers as well as Petitioners-in-person.