UP-ATS arrests ‘Shyam Pratap Singh Gautam’ for ‘converting’ 1000 Hindus to Islam
New Delhi: Mohammad Umar Gautam (formerly Shyam Pratap Singh Gautam ) and a Muslim cleric Mufti Qazi Jahangir Qasmi have been arrested by the UP Police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad under the state’s draconian anti-conversion law.
An FIR has been lodged at the Gomtinagar police station Lucknow, which says that the clerics were involved in the conversion of deaf children and women to Islam and more than 1,000 people had been converted so far.
“Both were arrested after interrogation. We have got important evidence, documents of foreign funding,” Uttar Pradesh ADG (Law and order) Prashant Kumar said at a press conference.
“The deaf and dumb son of a couple living in Kalyanpur, Kanpur, was converted and sent to South India. Thousands of such cases have come to light. The people were promised money and jobs in lieu of conversion,” he told reporters.
Hailing from a Rajpoot family of Fatahpur in UP, Shyam Pratap Singh Gautam (son of Dhanraj Singh Gautam) was born in 1962. He converted to Islam 35 years ago and become Mohammad Umar Gautam. He was living in Batla House from three decades.
Hundreds of Muslims have been arrested under the anti-conversion law. Several of them have been accused of love jihad, which is a conspiracy theory alleging that Muslim youths are running a jihadist mission to convert Hindu women by marrying them.
Scores of human rights groups and civil society organisations have raised strong concerns against the aforementioned law enacted by the Uttar Pradesh government.
