Police in Prayagraj, UP have arrested three Islamists, including a madrasa teacher, who were part of a religious conversion racket at the ongoing annual Magh Mela.
Of those arrested, two had converted to Islam sometime back and were found selling and distributing sacrilegious, anti-Hindu books and pamphlets alongside pro-Islamic literature with the motive of encouraging religious conversion at the Magh Mela.
ADCP (crime) Satish Chandra said: “The accused also distributed objectionable books at other Hindu religious places including Kashi Vishwanath Temple and Assi Ghat in Varanasi, Hanuman temple at Prayagraj.
“The prime accused Mehmood Hasan Gazi used to hire youth for Rs 5,000 for the purpose. After the arrest, the accused informed the police that they used to take photographs, mobile numbers and other details of those persons whom they gave books for distribution.”
204 suspicious Islamic books, 3 mobiles, 4 Aadhaar cards, Rs 2600 cash and a diary were recovered from their possession.
The arrests followed after a BJP MP tweeted about objectionable literature being distributed in the Mela area following which police had detained two youths for questioning.
The ADCP said that the arrested persons include Mehmood Hasan Gazi, Mohammed Monish a.k.a Ashish Kumar Gupta and Sameer a.k.a Naresh Kumar Saroj. During interrogation, Gazi confessed that he used to get foreign funding for religious conversion.
“He got foreign funding using e-wallets,” police said adding further investigations were underway to unearth details about the racket and foreign funding received till now.
The prime accused Mehmood Hasan Gazi revealed that he was a president of Bazm-e-Paigam-e-Behdaniyat and was a teacher at Madrasa Islamia Himdadia in Mariadih village of Puramufti in Kaushambi district.
“Mehmood Hasan used to print books and pamphlets in which Islam was exaggerated while objectionable comments were made against Hindu religion. Some books compiled and printed by Mehmood presented wrong interpretation and meaning of Vedic hymns and ‘shlokas’,” the ADCP said.
Youth of poor financial backgrounds were lured to distribute books and pamphlets at Hindu religious places. The motive behind distribution was to encourage religious conversion to Islam. People of weaker sections were soft targets, the ADCP added.
Madarsa teacher Mahmood Hasan Gazi admitted in the interrogation that he used to get funding from Abu Dhabi in UAE for this work.
Prayagraj’s deputy commissioner of police told during a media interaction, “Nowadays, Magh Mela is going on here. At such time we arrested two boys from the Magh Mela. They were distributing religious books on a stall. Some of the books were related to the religion Islam. Some other books were about Hindu Dharma in which there are articles quoting and misinterpreting verses from Hindu Dharmic scriptures. This can hurt the religious sentiments of the people from the Hindu community. Such books were being distributed by them on that stall.
“One of them is Monish and the other is Sameer. Earlier, both of them were Hindus. Monish converted to Islam 2 years ago while Sameer converted 12 years ago. Mahmood Ghazi is a madrasa teacher who used to supply these books to the two youths who were distributing the books there free of cost. While distributing the books, they clicked photographs with the people who would take these books. The two also took the contact numbers of those people. The purpose of this activity was to spot the soft targets and later convert them. We took action as soon as we received this information.”
He further said, “These people would especially visit the Hindu Dharmic places. They had put a stall near the Hanuman temple in the city. They had also visited Banaras where they distributed such books on the Assi Ghat of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Now we have arrested the two booksellers and the one who supplied these books to them. We have taken action against them and also investigating the case further. They received funds from Abu Dhabi. They used to click photographs with people taking books from them.”
“Then the two booksellers would send these photographs to their supplier Mahmood Ghazi. He would then forward those photographs to a foreign country from where he would receive funds in his money wallet in an instalment of Rs 10000 each. We have inquired for more details about these transactions. These books are printed in Delhi. Some of them are also printed locally. There is no ISBN on any of the books,” he further said.
There is a high chance that these hate-mongering texts were printed in the Abul Fazl enclave area of Delhi, which is the hub of printing jihadi literature in India. This enclave also houses the New Delhi HQ of the hardline Islamist outfit Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), and is adjacent to Jamia Milia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh localities.
While left-liberal elites and Islamists like Asaduddin Owaisi and Rana Ayyub are creating a fake narrative of “impending Muslim genocide in Modi’s India”, the reality is that Islamists and their Abrahamic counterparts – evangelical Christian missionaries – are spreading hate against Hindu Dharma and carrying out conversion rackets during Hindu festivals and near our most iconic mandirs with impunity.
Our judiciary, currently controlled by the unconstitutional collegium, is entertaining petitions by anti-Hindu outfits against desperately-needed anti-conversion laws instead of coming to the aid of beleaguered law-abiding Dharmic citizens.
