Meerut: Following the issuance of non-bailable warrants against former minister and BSP leader Haji Yaqub Qureshi, his wife, and two sons, the police administration initiated action to demolish his house and meat factory in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. Police have launched a search operation for Yakub Qureshi and his family. According to the police, the location of Yakub Qureshi and his son Imran has been found in Delhi. A police team has camped there to nab the two. At the same time, the location of Yakub Qureshi’s wife Shamjida and the other son Firoz has not yet been found by the police.
Former minister Haji Yaqoob Qureshi owned and ran Al Fahim Meatex Private Limited. This meat factory is situated in Village Allipur Jijmana Dhikauli under the Kharkhauda police station area. There was an illegal business of meat packaging and processing going on in the factory. Police charged 18 people, including Yakub Qureshi, his wife Shamjida, and sons Firoz and Imran, after recovering meat from the spot. Meat worth five crore rupees was caught in the factory. Yakub Qureshi is yet to hand over the records of packaging and processing in the factory to the police. The police have already issued a notice for the same.
The police today visited the meat factory, which already has been seized, and pasted notice that it will be demolished. A similar notice was pasted on his house, and a hospital, both of which are built illegally by the BSP leader.
Speculations of former minister Yakub Qureshi’s meat plant at Hapur Road being bulldozed by the Meerut Development Authority (MDA) are being made ever since the crackdown on it began. The MDA did not want to rush into the matter as the appeal filed on behalf of Yakub in the Supreme Court on the matter of mitigation map of the plant is in the process. The map approval of this plant has been pending for several years. The map application was rejected by the MDA as the land on which the plant was built included green verges, road widening land, and land for public use.
There was an appeal in the government and the High Court after which Yakub Qureshi had received the instruction that if he breaks the construction of green verge and road widening land, and land for public use, then the map should move towards approval. Yakub Qureshi demolished the construction of green verge and road widening land but kept the encroachment on the land for public use. The MDA again rejected his application.
The MDA got a written affidavit from Yakub Qureshi that no commercial or any kind of activity would be carried out till the case was disposed of. Recently, a violation of the same affidavit was found when the business was going on by secretly running the meat plant on a large scale.
On the information of illegal slaughter, a joint team of police and local administration had raided Al-Faheem Meatex Private Limited in Allipura village on Meerut-Hapur road on March 30. During the raid, 2,460 kilograms of meat said to be worth rupees five crores was recovered after which an FIR was lodged against Qureishi.
The MDA is likely to take action at former minister Yaqub Qureshi’s house at Sarai Wahlim in Meerut. In fact, about four years ago, Yakub Qureshi revamped his old house in a new way. During this construction, a basement was also built in it without taking permission. Being the old city, the basement could not be allowed nor could it have had a map passed by the offices. The MDA had directed to demolish that basement. Yakub Qureshi told MDA that the basement is demolished. But it is now known that he lied.
On Wednesday (April 6, 2022), the administration sealed Yakub Qureshi’s My City Hospital on Hapur Road in Meerut. Dr Sudhir Kumar, who was involved in the operation along with Deputy CMO Javed Hussain, said Qureshi’s hospital was operating without registration.
The hospital was being run in the name of Yakub Education Charitable Trust. During the course of the operation, it also came to light that the hospital was given to another person to run on the lease. Without registration, the hospital cannot be given on lease to anyone else.
Yakub Qureshi, who is a four-time Mayor from Meerut, had made headlines after he announced a bounty of Rs 51 crore for beheading the cartoonists of France-based publication Charlie Hebdo for publishing the cartoon of Prophet Mohammad.