NEW DELHI: While investigating the source of terror funding in the Red Fort bomb blast case, ED has stumbled upon a new land rip-off in Madanpur Khadar in Delhi, involving acquisition of prime land in 2013 from people, who had died between 1978 and 1998, by forging their signatures and fingerprints.
Sources said it was Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui, chancellor of Faridabad-based Al-Falah University - which is at centre of the probe into the blast case - who allegedly got the land registered through an associate in the name of Tarbia Education Foundation, a trust where Siddiqui is a director.
"It was found that a forged general power of attorney (GPA) was created in the names of persons who were already dead. This forged GPA was later used to sell their land to Tarbia Education Foundation of Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui," a senior official aware of the ED probe said.
The sources said the investigation further revealed that many landowners, whose plots were transferred to the foundation, had died between 1972 and 1998, while the GPA was registered much later in 2004, forging signatures and fingerprints of the deceased. This GPA is shown as executed in favour of Vinod Kumar, who later sold the land to the foundation.
ED is probing claims made by kins of the deceased who have been fighting legal battles since 2015 for restoration of these lands fraudulently acquired by the foundation.
According to ED's preliminary probe, the deceased persons in whose names the GPA was signed included Nathu of Madanpur Khadar (died in 1972); Harbans Singh of Tehkhand (died in 1991); Harkesh of Okhla Phase-2 (died in 1993); and Shiv Dayal and Jay Ram of Tughlakabad (died in 1998). The 2004 GPA shows them as having signed it in favour of Kumar, who then sold these land to the foundation in 2013.
Siddiqui has been in ED custody since Nov 19. He was arrested in connection with financial irregularities in his university. Though a terror module has been busted involving doctors and other workers associated with the university, neither the National Investigation Agency nor ED have directly linked Siddiqui or his Al-Falah University with the Delhi blast yet.
The arrest was not his first brush with the law. Siddiqui was first arrested in connection with an alleged fraud linked to a deposit scheme he ran in his hometown of Mhow in MP.
The Al-Falah University and Siddiqui came under investigation after it was found that the suicide bomber who set off the blast near Red Fort on Nov 10, Dr Umar Un Nabi, was a teaching faculty at the university and had planned a series of blasts across Delhi and other parts of the country along with other doctor colleagues and associates from the university.
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