THE BAREILLY Police on Monday said they have arrested four men accused of running an alleged religious conversion racket that targeted vulnerable families across several districts. Police identified the four accused as Abdul Majeed, Salman, Arif and Faheem. Majeed, who worked as a cleric at a madrasa, is the mastermind of the conversion gang, police said. Additional Superintendent of Police, Bareilly South, Anshika Verma, told mediapersons, “The racket came to light when Akhilesh Kumari, a resident of Aligarh, reported that her visually impaired son, Prabhat Upadhyay, had gone missing on August 15. Four to five people were giving him the temptation of marriage and pressuring him for conversion.” “A police team reached the Madrasa and saw four to five people.They claimed Prabhat would be renamed Hamid,” Verma said. Verma said the police seized 10 books, 12 CDs, including one belonging to Zakir Naik from Prabhat’s possession. “ We have also recovered Aadhaar Cards, a passport, religious books and conversion certificates,” she said. According to police, Prabhat, a professor who earned his PhD from Hyderabad University and had been teaching at government colleges, was in contact with members of the gang. He allegedly got involved with them after his divorce, his mother said in her complaint. Police said Prabhat's mother alleged that the men had been pressuring him for months. When she and her relatives confronted the madarasa, they were threatened and driven away. According to police, the gang had also converted Brijpal Sahu, a resident of Subhash Nagar in Bareilly, more than a decade ago and renamed him as Abdullah. Sahu’s sister was converted to Aisha and his mother Usha Rani was converted to Amina. “The police have registered a case under sections 140(3) (abduction), 351(3) (criminal intimidation) of the BNS and relevant sections of Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. Further investigation is underway,” police said.
