The raids are being conducted at six places in Delhi and UP. (File) Following six arrests by UP ATS in a case of alleged mass religious conversion, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a case of money laundering. On Saturday, the agency carried out searches at six locations in Delhi and UP In connection with the case.
The places searched include the office of Islamic Dawah Centre (IDC), the organisation at the Centre of the controversy, apart from the residences of the main accused, Mohd Umar Gautam, and his associate Mufti Qazi Jahangir Qasmi, all located at Jamia Nagar in Delhi.
In UP, the ED has conducted searches at offices of Al Hassan Education and Welfare Foundation and Guidance Education and Welfare Society located at Lucknow.
“These organisations are run by Umar Gautam and have been playing an instrumental role in carrying out illegal conversions,” ED has claimed.
The agency has claimed to have recovered several “incriminating documents” during searches “which reveal the large-scale conversion carried out by accused Umar Gautam and his organisations all over India”. According to the ED, the documents also reveal “several crores of foreign funding received by the accused organisations for the purpose of illegal conversions”.
On June 21, the UP ATS arrested two clerics from Delhi – Mufti Kazi Jahageer Alam Qasmi, 52, and Mohammad Umar Gautam, 57, from Jamia Nagar area for allegedly running an organisation named Islamic Dawah Centre (IDC) along with their associates, through which they had allegedly been carrying out large-scale conversions for the past one-and-a-half years, as per the UP ATS. Later, UP ATS also arrested three more persons in the same case from Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi.
Three days ago, the UP ATS along with Gujarat ATS arrested one Salahuddin Zainuddin Sheikh from Vadodara in connection with the case, which UP ATS has claimed to be that of “converting more than a thousand persons to Islam” in Uttar Pradesh by allegedly luring them with money, jobs and marriages among other things.
In a statement, the UP ATS said Sheikh confessed he knew Umar Gautam. Sheikh used to send hawala money to Umar to fund the religious conversion, the police added.
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