Three more Islamic proselytizers involved in religious conversion racket in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have been arrested by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS).
Inspector-General of Police, ATS, Gajendra Kumar Goswami, said that names of these three surfaced during questioning of accused cleric Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui, who allegedly ran the biggest conversion syndicate across the country.
“We have arrested Idris Qureshi, Saleem, and Kunal Ashok a.k.a Atif from Lucknow on Sunday,” he said.
Maulana Kaleem was arrested on September 22 and currently, he is on a 10-day custody remand and during interrogation, he revealed that apart from Rs 1.5 crores illegally routed through Bahrain and Rs 3 crore from other Gulf nations, a sum of Rs 20 crore has been received by the trusts operated by him which is in violation of the foreign act.
It was also revealed that one of the arrested members Atif got in touch with Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui when he was taking the Medical Council of India(MCI) examination and had converted to Islam during his medical studies while living in Russia.
Also, Atif was running a medical clinic in Nashik illegally after he failed to pass the MCI examination, a necessary certification to practice medicine in India for those who studied medicine abroad.
The IG further said that accused Idris Qureshi collected funds for the last 20 years for Jamiatul Imam Waliullah Al Islamiyya Madrasa run by Kaleem Siddiqui and is also active in the operation of the madrasa.
“Evidence so far has confirmed that under the guise of a social harmony programme, a syndicate of illegal conversions was being operated by the accused,” said the official.
Others who are now in the crosshairs of the police include Noida sign language interpreter Irfan Sheikh, Munna Yadav, and Rahul Bhola. Gujarat businessman Salahuddin Zainuddin and a Maharashtra doctor Firoz Shah.
Earlier, the ATS had busted the illegal conversion racket in June with the arrest of Umar Gautam a Hindu convert to Islam and his accomplice Mufti Kazi Jahangir Qasmi, and later its Nagpur syndicate was busted with the arrest of Rameshwar Kawre a.k.a Adam, Qausar Alam, and Bhuriya Bando a.k.a. Arslan Mustafa.
In order to spread the religion of Islam, the Islamists had devised a sinister plan to first convert the hearing and speech impaired children and then use them as human bombs.
It has also now emerged that Mufti Qazi Jahangir Qasmi and Mohammad Umar Gautam had received funding from Pakistan’s notorious spy agency ISI and other global sources.
The duo was based out of Delhi’s Jamia Nagar which is known as a hotbed of Jihadi activity and coercively converted around 1000 people to Islam by specifically targeting the deaf and mute individuals along with women and children for the same.
After the arrest of these individuals by the ATS, the Enforcement Directorate has now registered a case to look into foreign funding and money laundering angles in this racket.
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