Thousands of Muslims in the Indian city of Hyderabad on Friday (October 30th) dismissed COVID-19 risks to celebrate the birth of Prophet Muhammad.

Despite heavy rains, footage showed huge, jubilant crowds parading through the city with no regard for social distancing.

India on Friday recorded 48,268 new cases of COVID-19 and 551 deaths bringing the total number of infections recorded in the country to 8.137 million since the pandemic began, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Muslims across the country celebrated Milad-un-Nabi the birthday of Prophet Mohammed on Friday. Despite the rising number of cases and recent heavy rains and floods that battered several parts of the city.hyderabad celebrated Milad-un-Nabi like the previous years.

Devout Muslims offered special prayers besides night-long prayers that were organized in parts of the city. Some organizations set up food and blood donation camps.A massive procession was taken out in the city by the Sunni United Forum of India (SUFI) from Quadri Chaman in Falaknuma. Several tributary processions joined the main procession at Charminar.

Police imposed traffic restrictions diversions on several routes in view of the processions mostly in the older parts of the city. The police on their part made elaborate bandobasts by deploying personnel from different wings of the Hyderabad City Police and the Telangana State Special Police. To assist the local police, teams of Rapid Action Force too were deployed.