ATS court convicts 16 in religious conversion case

Lucknow: A special Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) court of the Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday convicted Umar Gautam and 15 others in connection with an illegal religious conversion case of 2021.

The court, while sending all the convicts to jail, summoned them on Wednesday to hear arguments on the quantum of sentence to be awarded to them, according to the order. Mohammad Umar Gautam along with Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam Qasmi were held from Delhi’s Jamia Nagar on June 20, 2021, according to UP police.

They were allegedly running an outfit involved in converting students with hearing disabilities and poor people to Islam in Uttar Pradesh with suspected funding from Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI, they said.

The arrests were made by the Uttar Pradesh ATS following the registration of an FIR in the case at Lucknow’s ATS police station, a senior UP police officer had then said. Gautam lived in the Batla House of Jamia Nagar in Delhi and had converted to Islam from Hinduism.

During interrogation, he boasted to the police of having converted “at least 1,000 people to Islam”, luring them with marriage, money and jobs, Director General of Police Prashant Kumar, who was at the time holding charge of the ATS also, had said. The outfit they operated was named Islamic Da’wah Centre, having access to funds from Pakistan’s ISI and other foreign agencies, Kumar had told reporters.