Police have registered a case against six Tablighi Jamat members on the charges of lewdness and misbehaviour with nurses at the isolation ward of a Ghaziabad hospital where they had been admitted.

“They violated protocol and sat on the same bed most of the time. They would also roam the ward naked — without pants — and play raunchy songs (on their mobile phones). They misbehaved with female staff and demanded beedis and cigarettes from the nurses,” Ravindra Rana, chief medical superintendent of the MMG District Hospital, said in a complaint to his seniors on Thursday.

“The nurses told me about the problem two days ago. I spoke to these people and tried to persuade them to let the staff do their duty properly. But they didn’t listen to me. Later, six nurses handed a written complaint against them to me,” says the complaint, a copy of which was forwarded to the police on Thursday evening.

On Friday, the six were shifted to an isolation ward set up in the Rajkumar Goyal Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad, at the behest of the local administration, Rana told reporters. “It had become difficult to handle these patients,” he said, adding that their new ward had no female nurses, only male paramedics.

Rana said the test results of five of the six had arrived on Friday. “One tested positive and four tested negative. The test report of one is still awaited,” he said.

A suspected Covid-19 patient can be discharged only after two consecutive negative tests.

All the six had attended last month’s Tablighi Jamat congregation at a mosque near Nizamuddin in Delhi that has been in the spotlight as a source of large-scale spread of the virus, Ghaziabad senior superintendent of police Kalanidhi Naithani said.

The six patients have been charged with “misbehaving with the nurses and acting obscenely”, he said.

It was not possible to get the reaction of the accused as the police refused to provide their identity details or contact numbers.

“I have ordered an inquiry. Further action will be taken if the charges are proved,” Ghaziabad district magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said.

Sources explained that the district administration was considering invoking the National Security Act against the six, which would make it difficult for them to obtain bail.

N.K. Gupta, chief medical officer of Ghaziabad, said 136 people in the district had been identified as having participated in the Nizamuddin congregation.

Of them, 90 had been sent to four quarantine facilities as they showed certain health problems. Later, six were admitted to hospital isolation wards on the basis of their symptoms.

A total of 1,203 people have been identified in Uttar Pradesh as having attended the Nizamuddin congregation, said Awanish Awasthi, additional chief secretary, home.

Amit Mohan, principal secretary, health, told reporters in Lucknow that 51 people had tested positive for Covid-19 in the state on Friday, taking the total to 172. Of them, 47 had attended the Nizamuddin congregation, he said.

Delhi complaint

Doctors from various hospitals in Delhi where the Tablighi Jamat members are admitted have complained to the Delhi government that they are not cooperating, PTI reported. The doctors have demanded enhanced security outside and within the hospitals where the members have been admitted.