The Uttar Pradesh Police's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has busted a nation-wide religious conversion racket and arrested two people on Monday. The accused have been identified as Mufti Qazi Jahangir Qasmi and Mohammad Umar Gautam. Both are residents of Jamia Nagar in South Delhi.

The UP Police said the racket involved the conversion of deaf children and women to Islam and more than 1,000 people had been converted so far. Police said more than a dozen children of a deaf and dumb school in Noida were also converted.

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Prashant Kumar, Uttar Pradesh ADG (Law and Order), said that the arrested were running a conversion racket. He also mentioned that this might be a case of funding from ISI for religious conversions. "Both were arrested after interrogation. We have got important evidence, documents of foreign funding," he said at a press conference.

During interrogation, the duo informed that they converted around 250-300 people every year. They met people who were economically weak including women, children and disabled. He said that around 1,500 children at a deaf and dumb school in Noida embraced Islam, adding that thousands of such cases have been reported across the state. 

Umar Gautam, according to police, himself had embraced Islam. He is a resident of Batala house in Jamia Nagar.

The matter came to light when parents of a student of Noida Deaf Society reported that their son is missing and was later forcefully converted to Islam, police said. “In a similar case we came across another student of Noida Deaf Society from Gurugram who also was converted to Islam. It has been found that these men used to lure people to adopt Islam by promising to get them married, get them job money," he added.

Both accused have been arrested and booked for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc, injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion, criminal conspiracy and cheating.

According to UP ATS, the work of conversion is being done in Noida, Kanpur and Mathura in UP and also in some other States. It is also being said that the religious conversions were being done at the behest of the Islamic Dawa Center.