Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has arrested a cleric from Meerut for allegedly running a "biggest conversion syndicate "Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui was arrested by the ATS, which is probing the racket, at around 9 pm on Tuesday from Meerut, Additional Director General (ADG), Law and Order, Prashant Kumar said.He was brought to the ATS headquarters here after being produced in a court, Kumar said. Following the arrest of Delhi's Jamia Nagar residents Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam Qasmi and Mohammad Umar Gautam, who ran Islamic Dawah Center, an outfit allegedly working on the ISI funding for converting deaf-mute students to Islam, on June 20, the ATS is probing the conversion racket and has so far arrested 10 people besides Siddiqui, the official said.
The 64-year-old Islamic scholar was on the radar of security agencies due to suspicious activities. He was picked up as soon as he arrived in Meerut late Tuesday night. He is currently being interrogated by the police. According to the ATS spokesman, Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui is a resident of Phulat in Uttar Pradesh`s Muzaffarnagar. The Islamic cleric runs Jamia Imam Waliullah Trust that funds several madrassas for which Siddiqui is alleged to have received huge foreign funding, according to the police. Uttar Pradesh Additional Director General (Law and Order), Prashant Kumar, said "Investigation shows that Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui`s trust received Rs 3 crore in foreign funding including Rs 1.5 crore from Bahrain. Six teams of ATS have been formed to investigate this case. "Meanwhile, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party has strongly condemned the arrest of the Islamic scholar. “This is wrong. The BJP government has no work other than harassing Muslims,” Samajwadi Party MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq said on the arrest of Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui by Uttar Pradesh ATS on charges of running a religious conversion syndicate.