Hindu Boy Converted Through Fear Of Eternal Hellfire For Non-Muslims, UP Police Arrest Three In Latest Crackdown On Illegal Conversions

In the latest crackdown by Uttar Pradesh police on illegal religious conversions, three men have been arrested for making a Hindu boy convert to Islam by showing him the fear of hellfire and through deception.

The accused have been identified as Nizam Hasan alias Rashid, Mohammed Sadiq and Azhar Malik, all residents of Saharanpur district of the state.

Police arrested them after conducting investigation into a first information report (FIR) filed on 1 July, 2023, on the complaint of a resident named Somdutt, alleging illegal conversion of his son Gaurav.

The case was taken up by Uttar Pradesh’s anti-terrorism squad (ATS), which has in the past couple of years claimed to have busted several such illegal conversion rackets, including those involving high-profile clerics such as Maulana Kalim Siddiqui.

When the ATS arrested Siddiqui in September 2021, they called him the “Khalifa of Dawah activities”, that is, kingpin of conversion rackets in India. Siddiqui got bail from Allahabad high court in April 2023 on the grounds of parity, as co-accused Irfan Shaikh had been granted bail by the Supreme Court.

The complaint by Somdutt, accessed by Swarajya, says that his son Gaurav got romantically involved with a woman named Reshma from Karnataka through an online game of carrom. Gaurav left his parents and began living in Bangalore city of Karnataka, cutting off communication with his parents.

With the help of Nizam, Sadiq and Azhar, Gaurav was eventually converted to Islam and taught to do namaz and observe Ramzan fasting. Somdutt too was lured by Nizam into conversion, but he did not fall into the trap.

Read Somdutt’s statement in the FIR (number 285 filed on 1 July at Sadar Bazaar thana of Saharanpur) below:

A press note issued by UP ATS yesterday (2 July), titled ‘Illegal conversion syndicate exposed’ (translated to English by Swarajya), says they arrested the three men on 1 July after obtaining proof of their conversion activities carried out through fear of “jahannum” (hellfire).

The note says that Nazim, during his interrogation, said that he came in touch with Somdutt regarding the latter’s disease of diabetes, for which Nazim gave him “medicine”.

Nizam began visiting Somdutt’s house after that. He began brainwashing his son Gaurav against the Hindu religion of his family, coaxing him into converting to Islam by saying its the best religion in the world and all other religions are false.

Under Nizam’s influence, Somdutt began visiting a madrassa. Nizam instilled into Gaurav the fear of hellfire, brainwashed him, luring him with a job and wife. After Gaurav accepted Islam, Sadiq and Azhar supported the conversion through money.

ATS’s press note however does not clarify if Reshma and Nazim are connected in any way.

Read the press note below:

While the original FIR against the four accused at Sadar Bazaar was under IPC sections 420 (fraud), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 354, along with Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, IPC section 295A (deliberately hurting sentiments) has been added after ATS’s intervention.

Swarajya contacted Somdutt on the phone number mentioned in the FIR. His wife answered the call but said she would not speak to the media and disconnected the call.

Last month, UP police arrested a person from Mumbai named Shahnawaz Khan alias Baddo along with a mosque employee Abdul Rehman for making a minor boy from a Jain family in Ghaziabad district convert to Islam by brainwashing. Police said Baddo persuaded at least three other youngsters, all Hindus, after meeting them through an online gaming app.

In January, Prayagraj Police in UP claimed to have busted an Islamic conversion operation going on at the famous Magh Mela in the city.

Two men, who were earlier Hindus but have converted to Islam, were selling books vilifying Hindu beliefs and promoting Islam. When the police questioned them, they revealed that they had been hired by a madrassa teacher to promote and sell those books to Hindus, get pictures clicked with them, and note their names and contact numbers to later target them for conversion.

The men were identified as Mohammed Monees, son of Shivkumar Gupta, and Mohammed Sameer, son of Dulare Saroj. A third person, Mohammed Mahmud Hassan Ghazi, was subsequently arrested who confessed to the police that he had paid Rs 5,000 each to Monees and Sameer to carry out his propaganda work, and he himself was paid from abroad, police said. Read more details of the case here.

In 2021, the Uttar Pradesh Police’s claimed to have busted several large-scale Islamic conversion rackets in the state and adjoining Delhi. The crackdown began in June 2021 with the arrests of Mohammed Umar Gautam and Mohammed Jehangir, who ran ‘Islamic Dawah Centre’ in New Delhi’s Jamia Nagar. 

The word Dawah (often spelled as Da’wah) literally means “invitation” and refers to the act of inviting or calling people to convert to Islam. 

The ATS accused the two of receiving crores of rupees from Islamic trusts abroad in the name of welfare work to carry out religious conversions. As per Uttar Pradesh ATS, when they probed the bank accounts of Islamic Dawah Centre, an accounted Rs 57 crore was found.

In another breakthrough a few months later, they arrested Kalim Siddiqui.

Around the same time as Siddiqui’s arrest, a video of a serving Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer in UP, Mohammed Iftikharuddin, emerged on social media. The senior IAS officer, who was serving as Chairman of Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation, was seen sitting with a group of Muslim men, discussing strategies for conversion to Islam.

The UP ATS has said in its various press releases that Dawah groups, in order to convert people to Islam, use various unlawful tactics including instilling fear of hellfire in their hearts, bribing them with money or land, and threatening them with dire consequences if they don’t convert.

Readers may note that Muslims controversially believe that on Yawm-ad-Din (translated as the Day of Judgement when the entire world would be destroyed as per Islamic belief), Allah will take a decision about people’s afterlife.

All the dead bodies will rise from the graves and gather on the plain of Arafat for the final Judgement. Those who are handed their own ‘book of deeds’ in the right hand will go to heaven, whereas those who are given their ‘book of deeds’ in the left hand will go to hell, to burn in eternal fire. Non-Muslims, no matter how many good deeds they may have done, will burn in eternal hellfire, as per this belief.

During the Supreme Court hearings on the hijab issue in February last year, Senior Advocate AM Dar argued that non-covering of hair and neck by a Muslim woman would mean she would be sent to burn in eternal hellfire on the Day of Judgement. The lawyer faced severe online criticism for presenting this argument.