Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 13: The Al-Falah University on the outskirts of Faridabad in Haryana which jumped to notoriety after the car blast near Red Fort in Delhi on Monday evening, is in the grip of different agencies probing various aspects of alleged irregularities in running the institution, officials said on Thursday.
Besides the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) having issued it a notice for using misleading claim of its two colleges being accredited with the autonomous government body, its founder and managing trustee Javed Ahmed Siddiqui is under the police scanner for an old alleged fraud case worth over Rs 7.5 crores and his vast corporate network while the Enforcement Directorate has launched a separate investigation into the source of funding of the institution.
According to its website, Al Falah University was established by the Haryana Legislative Assembly under the Haryana Private Universities Act. It started as an engineering college in 1997, was granted University status by the Haryana government in 2014 while the Al-Falah Medical College is also affiliated with the University. But it came under the scanner of the security agencies after at least two of its doctors were found linked with the suspected suicide bomber of the Delhi blast Dr Umar Un Nabi.
The NAAC, an autonomous government body that evaluates and certifies the quality of higher education institutions like colleges and universities, has issued a show-cause notice to Al Falah University for displaying false certification on its website. In its show-cause notice, the NAAC said it has noted that the university, “which is neither accredited nor applied for accreditation by NAAC,” has publicly displayed on its website that some of its colleges are NAAC-certified.
The notice quoted the website as reading, “Al Falah University is an endeavour of Al Falah Charitable Trust, which has been running three colleges on the campus, namely Al Falah School of Engineering and Technology (since 1997, Graded A by NAAC), Brown Hill College of Engineering and Technology (since 2008), and Al Falah School of Education and Training (since 2006, Graded A by NAAC).” “This is absolutely wrong and misleading the public, especially the parents, students and stakeholders,” the NAAC notice said.
The accreditation body has sought an explanation from the university and directed it to remove the portions on its website and other publicly available documents that claim false NAAC certification. The accreditation for Al Falah School of Engineering and Technology expired in 2018, while that of Al Falah School of Education and Training expired in 2016, the notice said.
“The accreditation status of both the colleges has expired. Both the colleges have not yet volunteered for fresh Assessment and Accreditation process of the NAAC,” the notice said. According to several observers, in its early years, the Al Falah University presented itself as an excellent alternative to Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia for minority students pursuing quality education.
In addition to its accreditation status, the university founder Siddiqui is being probed for his ‘vast corporate network’ and an old criminal case – in which an associate and he were accused of fraud worth Rs 7.5 crore and jailed for three years. The university’s legal advisor, Mohd Razi, however, denied all fraud charges against Siddiqui, including the Rs 7.5 crore allegation and claimed he had “no information” about the recruitment of Dr Muzammil Shakeel and Dr Shaheen Shahid, the two doctors linked with Dr Umar. “Hiring (and vetting of new hires) is the Vice-Chancellor’s job,” Razi said.
Siddiqui, born in Madhya Pradesh’s Mhow, is on the board of nine companies, all of which are connected via the Al-Falah Charitable Trust, the body that oversees the university’s functioning. These nine firms span the education, software, financial services, and energy sectors and, in the first potential red flag, most of them share the same registered address – a building in Delhi, “Al-Falah House, Jamia Nagar, Okhla.” The nine companies are:
- Al-Falah Investment (the first company, started in 1992)
- Al-Falah Medical College and Research Foundation (at which Shahid, Shakeel, and other accused were ’employed’ and where they met to plan a potential 32-car serial bomb terror strike)
- Al-Falah Developers Pvt Ltd
- Al-Falah Industrial Research Foundation
- Al-Falah Education Service Pvt Ltd
- MJH Developers Pvt Ltd
- Al-Falah Software Pvt Ltd
- Al-Falah Energies Pvt Ltd
- Tarbia Education Foundation
Most of these firms were active till 2019, after which they were either shut down or became inoperative. The Al-Falah Medical Research Foundation, however, thrived it began in 1997 as an engineering college and now operates on a 78-acre campus. Incidentally, the Al-Falah Building is also the office of the Al-Falah Charitable Trust.
The old criminal case that has resurfaced now was registered at Delhi’s New Friends Colony Police Station. The complainant accused Siddiqui and others of floating fake investment schemes that encouraged people to deposit money in the Al-Falah group of companies. The allegation was that Siddiqui and his associates persuaded people to invest in deposits in an Al-Falah company and then forged documents to show these had been turned into shares.
The gathered funds of Rs 7.5 crore were then diverted to the accused’s personal accounts. Siddiqui was arrested in 2001. In March 2003 the Delhi High Court rejected his bail plea, pointing to forensic evidence that suggested signatures on the share certificates were forged. It wasn’t till February 2004 that he eventually secured bail, but that was after agreeing to refund defrauded investors.
As recently as January 2020 Delhi Police raided the Okhla office. This was in connection with more complaints Siddiqui had defrauded investors, most of whom were from economically vulnerable Muslim households and were encouraged to invest in ‘halal’ schemes.
The NIA which is leading the probe into the blast near Red Fort has detained a shopkeeper from Haryana’s Nuh for selling 300 kilogram of ammonia nitrate to Dr Umar Nabi, who was behind the wheels of the Hyundai i20 car that exploded on Monday evening. The NIA also arrested Zamil from the Al-Falah campus. The authorities identified him as the recruiter.
In connection with the Delhi Red Fort blast, the Jammu and Kashmir police are also probing a suspicious Brezza car at the Al Falah University campus. The police have found a grey car in the Al Falah parking area and began an investigation to trace the owner. The police was on the lookout for a third car believed to be linked to the Red Fort blast case.
Fresh CCTV footage from the day of the Delhi blast shows prime suspect Dr Umar Nabi walking near a mosque close to the Ramlila Maidan, police said on Thursday. In the footage, Umar can be seen walking straight along a narrow lane before turning his head to the right — the moment when the camera captures his face — and then continuing ahead. Investigators believe that he may have visited the mosque shortly before allegedly carrying out the explosion, a senior police officer said.
Meanwhile, the Punjab Police on Thursday unearthed a grenade attack module backed by Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, with the arrest of 10 persons.
The accused were allegedly in touch with Pakistan based handlers to carry out a grenade attack to create unrest in Punjab. “In a major breakthrough, Ludhiana Commissionerate Police busts an ISI-#Pakistan backed grenade attack module and arrests 10 key operatives of foreign-based handlers,” Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said on X.
Preliminary probe revealed that the accused were in contact with Pakistan-based handlers through three operatives based in Malaysia to coordinate the pickup and delivery of a hand grenade. The DGP said the task was assigned by the handlers to carry out a grenade attack in a populated area to create unrest in the state.
Meanwhile, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, on Thursday condemned the blast near Red Fort as an “abominable terror attack” and asserted that “terrorism has no ground” in civil society. He also hoped that the government would leave no stone unturned in bringing the perpetrators to justice.
In a statement issued by the Jama Masjid, the Shahi Imam said with a firm national resolve, “we shall be able to unitedly fight the menace of terrorism and succeed in defeating it.” Condemning the “terror attack” at the heart of the national capital in the strongest terms, Bukhari said “terrorism has no ground, and could not have any, in the civil society.”
Before beginning her address at Gaborone, Botswana, President Droupadi Murmu observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to the victims of the blast near Delhi’s Red Fort. “Before I begin my address, I want to express my sympathies to the family and friends of the deceased in the Delhi blast. I urge you all to observe a minute’s silence in memory of the victims,” she said.