The Meerut police has announced a reward of Rs 25,000 each on Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Yakub Qureshi and his two sons. The development comes a day after police attached their properties worth more than Rs 100 crore in an ongoing probe against the recovery of 2,000 quintal meat.
According to police, the meat was illegally kept inside the meat plant of Qureshi, a former UP minister.
“We have announced a cash reward for bringing Qureshi and his sons — Mohd Imran and Firoz — into our custody. Before this, we had issued non-bailable warrants against Qureshi and 13 others, including his wife and sons,” SP city Vineet Bhatnagar said.
Earlier, on March 31, a raid was conducted at Qureshi’s meat plant.
During the raid, processed meat, weighing roughly 2,000 quintals, was found on the premises. Subsequently, the meat, worth Rs 5 crore, was destroyed and a case was filed against 17 people as the factory was allegedly operating despite the expiry of its licence.
Following the raid at the meat plant, a hospital owned by Qureshi was also searched and sealed by a district health team for allegedly “running the premises without renewing its registration”.
Yakub Qureshi had praised and announced Rs. 51 crore ‘reward’ for the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office over ‘blasphemous’ cartoons of Islam’s prophet. He had also announced a similar reward for the head of a Danish cartoonist accused of drawing a ‘blasphemous’ Mohammed caricature in 2006.
As per this Swarajyamag profile of Qureshi –
“Other than declaring to reward terrorists, he has made headlines for publicly thrashing an on-duty policeman and assaulting activists. Not just Qureshi, but his children have made headlines as well: while one of his sons has been in news for allegedly grabbing agricultural land in Meerut, his daughter has been reported to have assaulted students and teachers in a prominent city school, the video of which went viral at the time.
It’s said that the muscle to cover up such acts comes from his meat trade. Qureshi is a veteran of the meat trade and runs Al Fahim Meatex Private Limited, which is among the largest Indian exporters of buffalo meat. The company has long been at odds with the law.”
(With IANS inputs)
