A day after his arrest, Shahnawaz Khan, alias Baddo — prime accused in the alleged ‘conversion case through gaming app’ — was granted a transit remand and ordered to be produced before the Ghaziabad court in Uttar Pradesh within three days, officials said here on Monday.
Shortly after the court orders, the Mumbra Police (Thane), which had tracked and nabbed Khan, 23, from a resort in Alibaug (Raigad), handed him over to the Ghaziabad Police four-man team camping here for the past six days.
Absconding since several days after the alleged conversion racket erupted, Khan was reportedly in touch with some children who were targetted through a gaming App, ‘Fortnite’.
Following complaints of this and other alleged ‘conversions through App scam’, the Kavinagar Police Station of Ghaziabad lodged an FIR on May 30 against Khan, a youth said to be a resident of Devripada in Thane and engaged in a cosmetics business.
The complaint contended that Khan had sold computer gadgets to a minor Jain boy in Ghaziabad, then befriended him through regular chats, later made the juvenile recite Quranic verses and allegedly brainwashed him with videos of the fugitive evangelist, Zakir Naik of Mumbai.
The minor boy soon started visiting a local mosque in Ghaziabad to offer ‘namaz’ five times daily, shocking his family members and others, sparking a huge furore.
Following the complaint, the Ghaziabad Police swung into action, nabbed Abdul Rehman, a cleric linked to the alleged ‘conversion’ racket and were on the lookout for Khan who was said to be hiding in Mumbai and then moved to Raigad.
A techie studying in a junior college, Khan evaded the police teams but using tech-intel, the investigators finally zeroed in on him to a resort in Alibaug where he was holed up with his brother and arrested him on Sunday (June 11).
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