Indian doctor shows Islamophobia in hate speech against Muslims over coronavirus

An Indian doctor has been recorded in an exposé-style video engaging in blatant Islamophobia and hate speech against Muslims, especially the members of Tableeghi Jamaat, stressing that "these people are terrorists".

In videos posted by anti-Islamophobia activist CJ Werleman and fact-checker Mohammed Zubair, the principal of Kanpur's Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi (GVSM) Memorial Medical College, Arati Dave Lalchandani, can be seen talking about Muslims in a derogatory manner.

"These people are terrorists and we are giving them VIP treatment," Dr Lalchandani — a cardiologist by profession — can be heard saying. "We are wasting our resources on such people and getting our doctors sick for them.

"We use almost 100 [coronavirus] test kits everyday on them. If they didn’t exist here, we would not be needing these kits. These people should be beaten and sent to jungles and jails and kept in solitary confinement," she said in the video.

The woman then seems to appeal to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to "give an order that state’s resources won’t be used on them".

"We are sacrificing Rs1 billion of the nation for these 200 million people," she said, referring to the Muslims' population in India.

The Tableeghi Jamaat's event in New Delhi in March had become one of the hotspots of the novel coronavirus, with certain hospitals' management claiming at the time that the member were misbehaving with the staff.

In his post, Zubair said she's the same person who had "earlier alleged that Jamatis were spitting, misbehaving & demanding Biryani".

"One guy in the room suggests her how to get rid of problem by Muslim COVID-19 patients... 'Ma'am, Ek Injection lagwa dijiye hahaha.. Ek ek karke.. dheere dhere...' [Ma'am, they should be administered the injection one by one, slowly]," he wrote on Twitter.

In a video statement issued later, Dr Lalchandani said her comments were "under pressure" and claimed that they were morphed.

"No one new how corona[virus] would turn out. At the time, some of my statements were taken under pressure and it was a sting [operation]. There's no interview or statement or recording of mine," she said.

It was "done by superimposition, morphing, provoking, interrupting, and these people tried to disturb the peace here", she added.

"I did not take any community’s name but I am particularly fond of this community and I would give my life for them,” the doctor said, adding that she knew people who were Muslim and that she had treated Muslim individuals as well.

"I'm a doctor, I never thought of it that way. It was settled in two days," she said, referring to her comments in March about the Tableeghi Jamaat members.

Dr Lalchandani mentioned that both she and the Tableeghi Jamaat members had exchanged apologies and comments of gratitude with each other 

"Now such an act after 70 days when this matter was resolved in two days... these people had come with an expectation and they kept blackmailing me," she added, saying the 'blackmailing' was over admissions and recruitment to the college.

"I've been here for 38-40 years and everyone knows me. Circulating such a fake video is very bad," she said.