New Delhi: Mhow cleric Hammad Ahmad’s family had produced teachers across generations. But Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui, the eldest of his three sons, broke this tradition.
Siddiqui pursued engineering in the 1980s and over the next three decades, rose to become a business mogul, spearheading several ventures, including an investment firm, export and real estate companies.
In the late 1990s, he forayed into education and in 2014, set up Al-Falah University, which is now in the eye of a storm, with three of its teaching staff being linked to the terror module allegedly behind the Red Fort blast.
The module is also suspected to be connected to Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Al-Falah University, established in Haryana’s Faridabad, is managed by the Al-Falah Charitable Trust, established in 1995. Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui is the chairman of the trust.
The campus offers education in three colleges: Al-Falah School of Engineering & Technology, Brown Hill College of Engineering and Technology and Al-Falah School of Education and Training. The university’s medical college, Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, became operational in 2019.
The police have so far arrested eight individuals as part of the probe into the terror module, including doctors Muzammil Shakeel and Shaheen Saeed. A third doctor, Umar Nabi, was driving the car that blew up outside the Red Fort, a DNA test has found.
Umar served as an assistant professor in the general medicine department at Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences while Shakeel was a tutor in the physiology department. Senior-most among the trio, Saeed was working as an associate professor in the pharmacology department of the medical college until her arrest Monday.
The university stated Wednesday that it had got to know about two of its doctors being detained by investigating agencies.
“We wish to make it clear that the university has no connection with the said persons apart from them working in their official capacities with the university,” Bhupinder Kaur Anand, Vice Chancellor, said in the statement.
“We are deeply saddened and anguished by the unfortunate developments that took place and condemn the same. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the innocent people affected by these distressing events.”
ThePrint reached Siddiqui via calls and texts, seeking comment on the probe into the university and its staff. This report will be updated if a response is received.
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Rs 1,100 monthly salary to 70-acre campus
Al-Falah University was established in 2014 according to provisions of the Haryana Private Universities Act and got recognition from the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Siddiqui incorporated three already operational colleges under the university banner: Al-Falah School of Engineering & Technology, in operation since 1997; Brown Hill College of Engineering and Technology, in operation since 2008; and Al-Falah School of Education and Training, running since 2006.
Before developing into a 378-bed super-speciality hospital in 2014 on the same campus, Al-Falah Hospital started as a dispensary in 1997 with the stated aim of providing quality treatment to the local population.
The vast educational empire received a significant boost in 2019-2020 when the Medical Assessment & Rating Board (MARB) gave approval to the university to start a medical college from the hospital with an annual intake of 150 seats.
The MARB is an autonomous body under the National Medical Commission (NMC) with the mandate of carrying out inspections and assessments for establishment of new colleges, as well as annual renewal of college authorisation.
The MARB approval, which is renewed annually, continued for courses beginning at the Al-Falah medical college in the 2023-24 academic year. The medical college’s status was further upgraded in 2023 when the MARB approved intake of students for postgraduate courses in various subjects.
ThePrint has reported that regulator NMC is waiting for findings of the investigation into the blast case to take a call on action against the college.
According to the fee structure for 2025-2026 academic year announced by the medical college administration, students are required to pay over Rs 70 lakh for five-year MBBS. Annual hostel fee is fixed at Rs 3,10,000 per year for a double-occupancy room.
The stature of the university, with its 70-acre-plus sprawling campus, was such that Siddiqui this January welcomed then Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya on the premises to inaugurate a new 650-bed super specialty hospital building.
All of this would have been a distant dream for Siddiqui back in the 1980s, when he joined the erstwhile Bajaj Tempo after earning a degree in industrial engineering from Indore in 1986.
His first salary was approximately Rs 1,100 per month, Siddiqui had said in an interview with Business Standard in 1999. He, however, returned to follow in the footsteps of elders in his family, teaching at an engineering college in Maharashtra’s Dhulia before returning to his alma mater in Indore.
Although he followed the family tradition of teaching, he was simultaneously working as a sub-broker at the Madhya Pradesh Stock Exchange. He went on to become a full-fledged stockbroker in the early 1990s and formed his own company, Al-Falah Investment, in 1991.
When the stock market boomed in 1992, Siddiqui was prepared to maximise his gains and made immense profits selling debentures of Kotak Mahindra Bank. He said in the interview that he made at least 20 times his initial investment of Rs 10,000 in the debentures within a year.
In 1994, he joined the National Stock Exchange and then got membership at the Delhi Stock Exchange and the Over-the-Counter Exchange of India. The latter was subsequently derecognised.
Currently, Siddiqui serves as director of eight companies and manages the Al-Falah Charitable Trust, according to the corporate database maintained by Zauba Corp.
Former Delhi Minority Commission chairman Zafarul Islam Khan, who is familiar with Siddiqui’s history, however, has a different view of his rise.
“He started luring people from the community to invest in Islamic banking channels. To convince more and more of the poor from the community, he used to advertise through maulvis from different madrasas. Over a very short period of time, thousands, if not lakhs of investors put in their money in Al-Falah Investment to get exorbitant returns promised by Siddiqui,” Khan told ThePrint, recalling events around 1999 and 2000s.
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‘Jail and fraud’
In January 2000, a team from the Delhi Crime Branch raided the Al-Falah Charitable Trust office in Okhla as part of a crackdown on the trust and its associated enterprises, following several complaints from investors.
“Amid the pressure of the crackdown, Siddiqui fled and went underground while the Delhi Police arrested his two brothers, Hamood and Sufiyan. Later, he was also arrested by the police and had to spend at least a year in jail,” Khan said.
At one time, Siddiqui’s Al-Falah group of companies had generated rapid revenue and accumulated a total of around Rs 250 crore in accounts. The majority of this revenue—Rs 200 crore—was being driven by Al-Falah Investment, through which Siddiqui was pooling funds from thousands of Muslim investors.
These investments were made by poor Muslims, including those from the national capital, in the name of “Islamic” or “halal” investments that operate on the philosophy of managing finances within the framework of the faith.
The investments were roped in with the promise of higher-than-market returns that were allegedly never delivered, and investors approached the court, leading to cases and the arrest of Siddiqui.
His younger brother, Hamood, also established two firms based in their hometown of Mhow, named Al-Fahad Investments and Al-Fahad Fincom. These too faced accusations and cases from investors who had reportedly put in around Rs 150 crore in them.
Incorporated in the 1990s by Hamood, the firms faced repeated setbacks, including the cancellation of registration and penalties from the Reserve Bank of India for violating laws on deposits by pooling funds in the guise of a “Shariah scheme” without disclosing them on the balance-sheet.
Both brothers faced multiple cases under Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (fraud), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, based on complaints from investors across the country but were never convicted, police sources aware of their history told ThePrint.
According to Khan, Siddiqui and his brothers never owned up to the “investment fraud”.
“They returned the money only to those whom they feared. The poor were threatened and coerced into silence,” he said, adding that the dividend promised on investment never came because it was siphoned off for personal purposes such as buying of land.
The money he had pooled from investors was not returned even after Siddiqui was released from jail, Khan alleged, and he instead shifted focus to other sectors.
Khan also said the Al-Falah college management had reached out to him to get a story published in his digital news publication The Mili Gazette in April 2010. The proposed coverage was about the successful organisation by Al-Falah University of a staff development programme by the All India Council for Technical Education.
Khan said he knew enough about Siddiqui and the origin of his institution to be taken in by a press release issued in polished English.
“Sir, it will take another generation before we start reporting on the cheat and criminal Jawad and his institutions. He owes money to thousands of ordinary Muslims who trusted him. Let him pay back his wretched victims before trying to buy fake glory for himself and the institutions he built using the loot,” Khan claimed he said in response to the request in April 2010.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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