Earlier this week, the Uttar Pradesh ATS busted a massive ISI-funded conversion racket after it arrested Maulana Mohammed Umar Gautam and his accomplice Mufti Qazi Jehangir from Delhi for allegedly forcing over 1,000 people to adopt Islam. The duo, who ran an organisation named Islamic Dawah Centre (IDC), along with their other associates, were charged for mass conversion of people into Islam through inducements such as marriage, job and money and mental pressure.
The two accused, who are in seven-day custody remand from Wednesday (June 23), are being interrogated by the ATS regarding their conversion programmes and their links with Pakistan’s ISI, among other things.
Now, according to a report by Hindi daily Amar Ujala, the ATS has confirmed that during their interrogation the duo has disclosed yet another modus operandi of their mass conversion racket. They have revealed that they targeted girls in the rural areas as they were easier to prey on.
The ATS recovered a list with names of 31 non-Muslim girls who fell into their conversion trap and most of these girls belonged to the rural areas. On questioning, the accused reportedly told the ATS officials that it was easier to brainwash girls living in villages into embracing Islam. They are mostly uneducated and belong to lesser privileged families. So it becomes easier to lure them with jobs and financial aids, which was what Umar Gautam exactly did to lure his target into embracing Islam.
Girls from rural areas were easier targets since they belonged to economically backward sections
After the revelation, ATS once again re-examined the list of 31 women recovered from the Islamic Dawah Center (IDC), the organization belonging to the conversion racket’s prime accused Mohammad Umar Gautam. According to ATS sources, after re-checking the list, it was found that as many as 12 out of the 31 girls who had fallen into the conversion trap were from rural areas.
Besides belonging to rural areas in Uttar Pradesh, there were women who belonged to villages of Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Guwahati. The gang members gauged the victim’s vulnerabilities and accordingly use it to their advantage to trap the victims and convert them to Islam. Since most of these rural girls belonged to the economically backwards class and were financially oppressed they became easier targets for Umar Gautam and his cartel.
Umar Gautam and Mufti Jahangir Qasmi may have received funding from terrorist Hafiz Saeed
Prior to this, the ATS has made several startling revelations in the case. According to Zee News, sources within the Uttar Pradesh police have confirmed that they suspect the conversion racket run by Mufti Qazi Jahangir Qasmi and Mohammad Umar Gautam had funding from India’s most wanted terrorist and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed. The Zee News report said that the Hafiz Saeed connection to the religious conversion case came to the fore during the interrogation of the accused.
Mass conversion racket link with Zakir Naik surfaces
It recently revealed how the religious conversion racket was being operated as ‘motivation camps’. Moreover, Islamic Dawah Centre- Umar Gautam’s organization’s links with infamous Islamist preacher Zakir Naik’s aide was also unearthed.
Umar Gautam and accomplice had plans to use impaired children as human bombs after conversion
OpIndia reported earlier Umar Gautam and Qasmi’s plan to first convert the hearing and speech impaired children into Islam and then use them as human bombs. The perpetrators brainwashed the differently-abled children into hating non-Muslims, accepting Islam and were planning to use them as suicide bombers as the scope of retaliation from such children is limited, informed a senior official.
Racket funded by Pakistan’s ISI
Amidst all these startling revelations made in the case, it was revealed how the entire religious conversion racket was funded by some foreign organisations, Pakistan’s ISI and other Arab countries.
In fact, many victims’ families have come forward to narrate how they fell prey to this mass religious conversion racket. The father of a victim named Manu Yadav had alleged that he received a threat call on his son’s mobile number from Pakistan asking him not to cause hindrance in the conversion of his son.
Fatehpur teacher narrates ordeal
Besides, a lady teacher named Kalpana Singh from Nurul Huda English Medium in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh has revealed how Umar Gautam had visited the school she taught in with 20-25 other Maulanas in the year 2020, to brainwash them to adopt Islam by assuring financial security. She had also confirmed how the school under Umar Gautam’s influence began teaching toddlers Urdu and Arabic in class.
