M M Akbar arrested in Hyderabad en-route to Qatar; likely to be grilled by Kerala police

Meleveettil Muhammad Akbar aka M M Akbar, an Islamic orator, educationist and founder Director of Niche of Truth, a religious organization based in Kerala was on Sunday reportedly detained in Hyderabad for unknown reasons.

According to reports, Akbar had arrived in Hyderabad from Australia, and was scheduled to board a flight to Qatar’s capital Doha on Monday. However, he was picked up from Telangana’s capital before leaving the country.

Police sources said that they are looking into the details and procedure to take the controversial preacher to Kerala.

M M Akbar came to limelight earlier in January after Kerala’s communist government decided to shut down his Peace International School on charge of “promoting enmity” among different groups on the basis of religion. However, M M Akhar and school have rubbished the charge as baseless and ill-intentioned.

According to reports claimed that Abdul Rasheed, one of the 21 people who went missing under mysterious circumstances from Kerala and are suspected to have links with Islamic State terror outfit, was an employee of the Peace School. His wife Yasmin Ahmad, also missing, had earlier reportedly taught at the same school.

Akbar is the managing director of Peace International School, which has 13 branches in different districts of Kerala. The Kerala government claimed that the school was not following textbooks of SCERT, NCERT or CBSE but using books which were out of syllabus and published by private companies.

The officers conducting the investigation into the matter said that textbooks, published by Navi Mumbai-based Burooj Realization, were distributed in Class II of all the branches of the school. According to those officers, the books propagated Islamic orthodoxy and conversion.

The investigation team had apprehended three people earlier. After the arrest of Mohamed Vaid, 38, Sameed Ahammed Sheikh, 31, and Sahil Hameed Sayed, 28, Burooj Realization had withdrawn the textbooks distributed to schools across the country.

“They confessed that there were errors in the books and claimed that corrected books will be distributed from the next academic year,” an officer said.