A court in Lucknow on Wednesday (September 11) sentenced to life 12 persons, including a prominent Islamic scholar from West Uttar Pradesh, and awarded a 10-year jail term to four others after finding them guilty of running an inter-state syndicate for unlawfully converting Hindus to Islam. https://thewire.in/law/in-first-major-conviction-under-up-conversion-law-prominent-islamic-scholar-and-11-others-sentenced-to-life
This is the first major instance of conviction in a mass conversion case in the state after it introduced a controversial law against unlawful conversion in 2020-21.
Among those sentenced to life are prominent Islamic cleric Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui and Maulana Umar Gautam, a Muslim preacher who ran the Islamic Da’wah Centre (IDC) India in Delhi. Gautam was born into a Hindu family in Fatehpur and embraced Islam later in life.
The case dates back to June 2021 when the UP ATS arrested Gautam and Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam Qasmi from New Delhi on charges of allegedly mass converting people to Islam through the allurements and inducements of jobs, money, marriage and mental pressure.
They along with their organisation IDC India are booked for unlawful conversion, cheating, criminal conspiracy, hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity between religions. The police arrested more people during the course of the investigation and at the end 17 persons were chargesheeted. Legal proceedings against one person, Idris Qureshi, are stayed by the Allahabad high court.
by Omar Rashid
13/09/2024