Lived experiences of surveillance at the margins during COVID-19 in India
Page 8 Salim *
Businessman and a Kashmiri Muslim
“I didn’t know what happened. There was some issue with Tablighi, that there is COVID in the Nizamuddin area [in Delhi] or something. So the government probably pulled data from the phone network to know which Kashmiri numbers were present near Nizamuddin area between 13th and 15th of March… I didn’t go to Nizamuddin but I was in Lajpat Nagar. I don’t know how this happened to me.”
“My name was on a list with almost 850 other people. I didn’t even know my name was on it, somebody told me that ‘your name is also there on the list’. So, I was puzzled, that even if my name was there, how did it become public? They should have called me and told me that ‘you are on the list, are you okay’? They did eventually, but after they made the list public.”
“There were calls everyday… It started with ‘Are you okay? Are you experiencing any symptoms?’ Then, ‘are you okay? You will have to be quarantined’ even after the 15 days period… It was kind of like, they were doing this like it was a witch hunt, it was not done in like a sophisticated or professional way, the way it is supposed to be… They asked for my travel history, mode of travel…”
“Once there was a call from a CID officer, he asked for my passport number… I think they kept a watch on me… They are keeping an eye on me, I felt… They can stop me from foreign travel, they can stop me from going anywhere… If they have a database, they can find me.”
*Name changed as per request Translated From Hindi & English mixed language