Support or Suspend? Netizens divided over Babita Phogat’s tweet targeting Tablighi Jamaats

Team Udayavani, Apr 17, 2020, 3:51 PM IST

New Delhi: Commonwealth Gold-medalist Babita Phogat has left netizens divided as she continues to trend on Twitter over a controversial tweet targeting the Tablighi Jamaats over the Covid-19 pandemic in India.

Babita in her tweet said, “Presently, Coronavirus India’s second-biggest problem, with ‘Jahil Jamaatis’ being the first.”

Taking offense to her remarks a section of netizens are demanding suspension of her TWitter account with the hashtag #SuspendBabitaPhogat while others expressed solidarity with the wrestler with a counter hashtag #ISupportBabitaPhogat. Both these hashtags have been trending on the microblogging site.

Meanwhile Phogat has claimed that she has received several threats following her tweet. She however added that she totally stands by what she had expressed earlier and was not one to get scared by such threats.

“I have got threats on my social media handles. I would like to say that I am no Zaira Wasim. I would not get threatened…. I have always fought for my country. I stand by my tweets…. I wrote nothing wrong,” she said.

Zaira Wasim happens to be the actor who played the role of Babita’s sister – Geeta – in “Dangal”, the biopic based on the life of Phogat sisters and their father Mahavir Singh Phogat. She recently featured in the movie ‘The Sky is Pink’ before announcing goodbye to Bollywood, saying that the profession “threatened” her relationship with her Allah

Notably, Phogat also supported Rangoli Chandel – after her Twitter account was blocked over a post on the Islamic sect.

The Tablighi is one of the world’s biggest Sunni Muslim proselytising organisations with followers in more than 80 countries. At least 9,000 people participated in the Nizamuddin event in Delhi last month. Later, many of the attendees travelled to various parts of the country.

More than 25,500 Tablighi members and their contacts have been quarantined in the country after the centre and the state governments conducted a massive operation to trace them.

According to a media report 30% of the COVID-19 cases in India have been linked to the Markaz, with the percentage going as high as 85% in Telangana. As soon as the large gathering was discovered by the police, it is said that a total of 22,000 people were sent into quarantine.