Meerut: An Uttar Pradesh court on Tuesday granted bail to former minister Haji Yakub Qureshi in a 16-year-old case in which he had allegedly offered a booty of Rs 51 crore for beheading a Danish cartoonist for making caricatures of Prophet Mohammad. Qureshi is in Sonbhadra Jail after being arrested last month for running illegal meat processing and packaging business.
During a programme at Meerut's Faiz-e-Aam Inter College on February 17, 2006, Qureshi announced an award of Rs 51 crore for anyone who beheaded Danish cartoonist Charlie Hebdo. Qureshi also said that he announced that in full consciousness. A controversy erupted following his statement and it was constantly telecast on news channels. A local BJP leader had registered a case against Qureshi at the Delhi Gate police station in 2007.
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Later, in April 2022, a case was registered against him and his son in connection with a complaint of running illegal meat processing and packaging. The police arrested him and his son on January 7, 2023 and sent them to jail. Qureshi was sent to the Sonbhadra Jail and his son to a different jail. Meanwhile, Qureshi's lawyer Mahavir Tyagi said his client had applied for bail following which, the additional district judge court number three of Pramod Kumar granted the former minister's bail in a case related to Danish beheading case.
Qureshi was a minister in the Mayawati government. He had won the Meerut seat in 2007 after contesting his first polls as a candidate from UP United Democratic Front and later joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). He contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the Meerut-Hapur constituency but lost to BJP's Rajendra Agarwal by a narrow margin.
