Hyderabad: Days after arresting the well-known Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui from Meerut on charges of religious conversion, the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Tuesday raided the madarsa of the famous preacher in Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi.
Earlier Maulana Mohammed Umar Gautam and Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam Qasmi were arrested in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar area of Dehli under similar alleged fake allegations.
As per media reports, the UP ATS conducted the raid on the basis of an order from a court. Documents related to funding have reportedly been seized by the ATS.
Maulana Kaleem Siddiqi’s organisation Global Peace Center is located in the F-block of Shaheen Bagh. The 64-year-old Islamic scholar is a prominent cleric from Uttar Pradesh and the president of both the Global Peace Center and the Jamia Imam Waliullah Trust.
The ATS alleged that the revered preacher was running India’s “biggest (religious) conversion syndicate.” Prashant Kumar, UP additional director general (law and order) claimed that Siddiqui’s Jamia Imam Waliullah Trust conducted illegal religious conversions under the guise of running “communal harmony” programmes.
Furthermore, he alleged, “investigation shows that Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui’s trust received Rs 3 crore in foreign funding including Rs 1.5 crore from Bahrain. Six teams of ATS have been formed to investigate this case.”
On October 1, the UP ATS claimed that it has arrested one more person in connection with the alleged conversion racket, Dheeraj Jagtap, a resident of Yavatmal in Maharashtra, who had reportedly embraced Islam 10 years ago and has been involved in Dawah (Islamic preaching) ever since.
He was taken into custody after the ATS reportedly deemed him “suspicious.”
As per media reports, 14 more people, including Maulana Umar Gautam, Maulana Kalim Siddiqui, Rameshwar Kawade alias Adam, Bhupriya Bando alias Arsalan Mustafa and Kausar Alam, have been arrested during the investigation.