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STF to probe how money earned through halal certification was used
This organization was not authorized by any government regulatory body and used to mint money by issuing fake halal certificates and instilling fear among companies about rejection of their products by a community, says ADG
LUCKNOW After the arrest of four office-bearers of Halal Council of India for allegedly issuing fake halal certificates to mint money from big companies, UP Special Task Force ADG Amitabh Yash said investigators will also probe how and where money earned through halal certification was being used for years.
Informing the media, the ADG said this organization was not authorized by any government regulatory body and used to mint money by issuing fake halal certificates and instilling fear among companies about rejection of their products by a large community. These certificates were issued without collecting any sample of the product sample and without any lab testing, he added.
The ADG said this halal certification syndicate was spread across the country with a nexus to extort money from companies on the pretext of selling their products in the open market. He said a detailed investigation was required and more arrests were likely in the matter.
Four office-bearers of Halal Council of India, Mumbai, including its president Maulana Habib Yusuf Patel, vice-president Maulana Mudassir Sapadia, general secretary Mohammad Tahir Zakir Hussain Chauhan and treasurer Mohammad Anwar, all residents of Mumbai, were arrested by the STF after being summoned to its office in Lucknow for questioning on Monday.
They were arrested after they failed to give satisfactory replies to questions about their regulatory authority and its sampling process. This Mumbai-based organization used to issue halal certificates for all kinds of products, including vegetarian products.
The arrest came three months after an FIR was lodged at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow on November 17 last year in connection with a complaint of illegal halal certificates being issued to non-vegetarian and vegetarian products by some organizations, including the Halal Council of India.
The state government transferred the halal certification case to the STF for detailed investigation on November 20, 2023. The government also banned production, storage, distribution and sale of halal-certified products in the state with immediate effect on November 18.
Export products, however, were kept out of the purview of the ban.
The FIR was registered on the complaint of city-based social worker Shailendra Kumar Sharma, a resident of Motijheel colony, Aishbagh, Lucknow. It was lodged under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including Section 153-A for promoting enmity between two groups on the ground of religion, 420 for fraud and 467 for forging documents.
Other sections in the FIR were 468 of the IPC for using forged documents for cheating, 471 for using forged documents as genuine and 384 for extorting money.
