3 held on charge of managing funds for conversion syndicate
The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Sunday arrested three people namely Mohd Idrisi Qureshi, Mohd Saleem and Mohd Atif alias Kunal Ashok Chowdhury for their alleged links with the religious conversion racket operational across different states, said UP Police’s additional director general (ADG), law and order, Prashant Kumar.
The ADG said, “The trio was actively involved in arranging and transferring funds worth several crores to promote illegal religious conversions. Qureshi and Saleem are residents of Muzaffarnagar, UP, while Atif is a resident of Nasik, Maharashtra.” He said that names of the three accused surfaced during interrogation of Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui, who was arrested from Meerut on Wednesday and at present he was in 10 days custody of ATS since Friday for interrogation.
According to the ADG, the ATS is probing the links of religious conversion racket after it was unravelled with the arrest of
Maulana Umar Gautam on June 22, this year. So far, 14 people have been arrested from different parts of the state and other states in this connection.
“The trio managed funds transferred to the bank accounts of a trust operated by Siddqiui. The probe revealed that over Rs 20 crore was transferred to the trust’s bank account from different sources and nearly Rs 1.5 crore was transferred to it from Bank of Bahrain in Gulf,” he said.
The police officer said that one of three accused, Saleem, was associated with Siddiqui for past 17 years and had been involved in this racket. “Idris is associated to Siddiqui for past 20 years and have been helping him in arranging funds from different sources in the name of religion preachings. Likewise, Kunal Ashok Chowdhury was associated to Siddiqui for the past two years when he got converted to Islam while studying medical in Russia,” he said.
Kunal also operates a medical clinic in Nasik illegally after he failed to clear the medical council of India exam after completing his medical course in Russia, he added.