A special NIA-ATS court has sentenced a total of 12 accused including Maulana Umar Gautam and Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui to life imprisonment in the Lucknow illegal conversion case. Apart from this, the court has sentenced the remaining 4 accused to 10 years imprisonment. The names of these accused are Rahul Bhola, Mannu Yadav, Kunal Ashok Chaudhary and Salim. The court on Tuesday declared all of them guilty.
Special Judge Vivekananda Sharan Tripathi will sentence all the convicts today. In the case, the Uttar Pradesh ATS said that Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui, Umar Gautam and Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam were running an illegal conversion racket across the country. Under this charge, each was convicted under sections 417, 120b, 153a, 153b, 295a, 121a, 123 of the Indian Penal Code and several sections of the Illegal Conversion Act.
One of the accused took a stay
There were a total of 17 accused in this case, out of which 16 have been declared guilty. The 17th accused, Idris Qureshi, was not punished as he got a stay from the Allahabad High Court.
In June 2021, the UP ATS filed an FIR against each of them in this matter. Later, in September of the same year, after an investigation, the agency arrested Siddiqui from Meerut. At the same time, ATS claimed to run the largest conversion syndicate in the country. On that, ATS said that the donation comes to the trust through hawala, he himself was managing it.
The conversion received funding from several countries
Along with this, during the investigation, the ATS found that funds worth Rs 1.5 crore were illegally sourced from Bahrain and funds worth Rs 3 crore were also sourced from other Gulf countries. The ATS further said that Kaleem also helped Umar and Mufti Qazi in conversion activities at the Islamic Dawah Center (IDC).
A conversion racket was going on
Maulana Kalim also ran a trust called Waliullah. This gang used to run programs in the name of social harmony across the country. But under his guise he was running a conversion racket. At the same time, based on the ATS case, the ED also registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 against Mohammad Umar Gautam and Mufti Qazi Jahangir Qasmi and the Islamic Dawah Center (IDC) in June 2021.
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