LUCKNOW: Former cabinet minister of Uttar Pradesh Yakub Qureshi and son Imran Qureshi were arrested by the Meerut police in coordination with the Delhi police team from Chandani Mahal area of Delhi late on Friday night.
Qureshi and his son were hiding at their relative’s place in the Chandni Mahal area of Delhi.
Yaqub Qureshi has been arrested for running an unlicensed business of meat processing and packaging.
On March 31, 2022, the Meerut police raided Yakub Qureshi’s unlicensed meat factory on Hapur Road finding huge quantities of illegally stored meat. Subsequently, the police registered a case against 17 people including Yakub Qureshi, his wife Sanjeeda Begum and sons Imran and Firoz.
Later, the Meerut police invoked Gangster Act against Qureshi and seven other members of his family in connection with the case. While Qureshi’s son Firoz had surrendered in the court and was sent to jail a day ago, his wife Sanjeeda Begum is out on anticipatory bail.
Yaqub Qureshi was a minister in UP's Mayawati government. He had contested his first election in 2007 as UP United Democratic Front candidate and had won the assembly seat of Meerut. After that in 2012, he joined the BSP and was fielded from Meerut-Hapur Lok Sabha constituency by Mayawati. Qureshi lost the election to BJP’s Rajendra Agarwal by a margin of 3000 votes.
He had shot to infamy when he offered a booty of Rs 51 crore for anyone who would behead Danish cartoonists Charlie Hebdo who had made cartoons of Prophet Mohammad.
The Meerut police had been conducting raids at all the potential hideouts of Qureshi ever since he was booked for running the illegal meat business.
ASP crime Aneet Kumar of Meerut police with the help of SOG and the surveillance team laid a siege around the kothi in which Qureshi had been hiding with his son Imran. As per the police sources, the father-son duo was arrested past Friday midnight and brought to Meerut.
As per the sources, Qureshi had been on the run since March 3, 2022. For some time, he lived in Rajasthan with his family and after that took refuge at the house of in-laws of his daughter in Delhi.
After the police announced a reward for his arrest, he changed his hideout and shifted to one of his relatives’ places in the Chandani Mahal area of Delhi.