News Brief
Uttar Pradesh ATS Busts Massive Conversion Racket; Gang Used To Target Deaf And Mute Children, Received Funds From ISI
Photo Credits: Amar Ujala
Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has busted a forcible religious conversion racket by arresting Umar Gautam and Jehangir Alam in Lucknow. The duo was apparently involved in coercively converting around 1000 people to Islam and especially targeting deaf and mute individuals along with women and children for the same.
Umar Gautam was arrested following three rounds of questioning after which it had emerged that he had secured funding from international sources, including the likes of Pakistan's notorious spy agency ISI, to convert others into Islam with the lure of money and certain other temptations.
The duo also revealed during the interrogation that they converted around 250-300 people every year.
The ATS had earlier detained individuals named Vipul Vijayvargiya and Kasif and interrogating them led the security forces to Umar, who is a resident of Batla House in Jamia Nagar. The conversion gang is said to have targeted people in Noida, Varanasi, Mathura and Kanpur.
Umar along with his other associates operate a syndicate in Jamia Nagar with the sole purpose of converting non-Muslims into Islams with a special focus on those who are deaf, mute along with children and women.
The gang attains adequate funds through their bank account and other sources for their malpractices, as per a report by the Navbharat Times.
The deaf and mute individuals were particularly chosen from a residential school in Noida. They were converted to Islam with promises of marriage, jobs and some other factors and their families were consciously kept unaware of these developments.
One such child named Aditya Gupta’s parent had filed a missing complaint of their son, who managed to contact the parents through video call.
Aditya said that the converted kids were later taken to a southern state, with the report mentioning that they were so scared that none of them were willing to come up and narrate their experiences currently.
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