Indian Muslim minority targeted during Covid-19 pandemic

NEW DELHI, India: A Muslim call-center operator at a Covid-19 "war room," who once saw himself as a Covid-19 warrior, is now unemployed after being falsely branded by a top politician as a key member of a bed-for-bribe scam. He is a victim of the rise in Islamophobia in India as the country grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic with scant evidence of condemnation from the authorities, activists say.

Early in May, a member of Parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Tejasvi Surya, stormed into a Covid-19 war room ostensibly to expose an alleged bed-for-bribe scam.