Nagpur: Engineer, ayurveda practitioner among three held in ‘conversion racket’

NAGPUR: In an action taken in city on Friday late evening, the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) from Uttar Pradesh has unearthed a sleeper cell of an alleged conversion racket linked to a nationwide group. The ATS had got information about the sleeper cell after arrests done earlier in Delhi and other places.
Investigating agencies are not ruling out funds from Pakistan’s ISI for this racket targeting economically-weak persons for conversion to another religion.
An engineer, identified as Prasad Kaware, was among the three rounded-up in the city. Religious preacher Kausar Alam Shaukat Ali and Bhupriyobando Mankar, who is an ayurveda practitioner, were picked up from an apartment at Ganeshpeth.
It’s learnt, the racketeers were planning to set up a ‘Dawa centre’ in the city on the lines of Delhi where the masterminds Umar Gautam and Mufti Qazi Jehangir were arrested.
Sources stated Mankar, a resident of Gadchiroli, has already converted and rechristened ‘Assalam Mustafa’. It’s learnt Kaware too had converted some family members after coming in contact with the racket.
Sources stated similar rackets have come up at other states like Kerala, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.