MEERUT: Uttar Pradesh Police raided a meat factory owned by former state minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, Haji Yakoob Qureshi, in Meerut, said officials on Friday. Meerut SSP Prabhakar Choudhary informed that the factory, owned by the former minister, was operating illegally in Meerut.
Police said that a case has been registered against 14 people involved in the operations of the factory under the Gangster Act. A total of 10 people have been arrested so far. "A case has been registered against 14 people while 10 of them have been arrested. We found that it was running illegally. Action will be taken against the culprits under the Gangster Act. Further probe is underway," Choudhary told ANI.
Qureshi had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh and lost by a narrow margin to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Rajendra Agarwal. In 2007, he was a minister in the BSP government in UP.
Qureshi had hit the headlines for announcing a bounty on the head of a Danish cartoonist who had made a caricature of Prophet Mohammad in 2006.
He was elected from the Meerut seat in 2007 as a UPUDF candidate while he subsequently joined the BSP. In 2012, he again switched to Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) after he was denied a ticket for the Assembly elections by the BSP.