Minorities panel refutes NIA allegations on funding for masjid

The Delhi Minorities Commission has rubbished the allegations of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that Khulafa-e-Rasheedia Masjid in Haryana’s Palwal district was built with funds from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorism conduits. 

Releasing the findings of its fact-finding committee, headed by the noted social activist Sultan Ovais Khan and including members of the Christian and Sikh faiths as well, the commission revealed that the mosque was not only constructed with local funds, but the land for the mosque was given by the villagers themselves. They included Hindus and Sikhs too. Besides eight acres given to a mosque and a madrasa to facilitate the teaching of poor boys, the villagers gave two acres for a hospital too. This shining example of India’s famed pluralism went unreported in the media until the NIA arrested Mohammed Salman, the imam of the mosque about a month ago from UCO Bank in South Delhi. The NIA contended that Rs.70 lakh was routed from foreign countries, an allegation discarded by the minorities panel on the grounds that there was no such entry in the mosque’s documents. The mosque was built through local donations. 

Earlier, it was reported that the NIA stated, “We suspect that the charity was done to create a base for Lashkar or FIF [ Falah-i-Insaaniyat Foundation] activities in the area. The idea was to generate goodwill by distributing money for organising weddings and the masjid to be encashed at the right opportunity. We have found records of around Rs.70 lakh being sent to India in instalments by the FIF network. We have seized books from the office of the masjid to verify its accounts. Money for construction of the masjid may have been given by others in the area as well, but we believe that part of the funds came from FIF.”

It was after the Imam’s arrest, and subsequent claims of the mosque being built with terror money, that the commission sent its team to find out the truth by speaking to a cross-section of people. The findings mocked the allegations of terror funding. The committee of the minorities panel alleged that the NIA did not follow the due procedure of law in the arrest of the Imam and in the seizure of documents. It also claimed that the NIA did not mention the mosque in its media dispatches, limiting itself to the Imam. The panel revealed that the NIA team raided the mosque but did not record the statement of the local people or even the members of the mosque’s management committee. It seized all original receipts, records and registers of the mosque but failed to prepare a seizure memo. It did not provide a receipt either. Similarly, the Imam’s documents and computer hard disk were seized without a memo.