The purple ink stamped on Iqbal Hussain Siddiqui's hand by Indian health workers was supposed to ensure he stayed home under quarantine.
But the 66-year-old Siddiqui, an egg seller in Mumbai's sprawling Dharavi slum, rubbed it off as best he could and went back to work. The mark would have condemned him to being stuck in an unventilated one-room home without a toilet. It was also, he claimed, part of an effort by the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to target Muslims like him, using health workers to gather data on the community under the guise of containing the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Modi wants to make Muslims second class citizens," said Siddiqui, who was ordered to be quarantined after a neighbor tested positive for the virus. "There is no one who is sick — it's all a lie."
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