New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Friday attached over a dozen properties of the Faridabad-based Al-Falah University as part of its money laundering probe into its parent trust and its director Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui, ThePrint has learnt.
Sources in the ED said that 20 buildings on the university campus, spread across 54 acre in Dhauj, worth approximately Rs 140 crore, were attached in the latest action.
Run by Delhi-based Al-Falah Charitable Trust and controlled by Siddiqui, Al-Falah University came into prominence in November when Umar un Nabi, a faculty member at its medical college, allegedly blew himself up in an explosive-laden car outside the Red Fort.
The ED’s provisional attachment comes two months after Al-Falah University patron Siddiqui was arrested in November last year. The ED probe stemmed from the two FIRs filed by the Delhi Police against the trust and its director. On Friday, the agency also filed prosecution complaint against Siddiqui and the Al-Falah Charitable Trust.
The provisional attachment order passed Thursday by the ED would be followed by a prosecution complaint against Siddiqui on Friday before a special court in Delhi, the sources added.
As for the blast that killed 15 people and left several injured, a probe by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, followed by the Delhi Police and later by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), traced the origins of the conspiracy behind the blast at the Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences and Research Centre in Dhauj village of Faridabad.
So far, the NIA has arrested nine people in connection with the blast case, linked to Nabi who was employed at the Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences and Research Centre. It also took into custody two more employees of the institute, Muzamil Shakeel Ganie and Shaheen Saeed, for their alleged role in the case.
Sources in the ED said that the latest action would not affect students, as a specific arrangement has been made.
“The Haryana government will take over the functioning of the university and its affiliated colleges, while the ED will control the possession of the immovable properties and land as the attachments will be confirmed,” an ED official told ThePrint.
In December, Haryana had passed a Bill to amend the Haryana Private Universities Act, 2006, giving massive powers to the government for the management and dissolution of those varsities, especially involved in grave lapses related to national security.
A month before, ThePrint reported that the ED found Al-Falah generated Rs 415.10 crore in revenue from 2016 to 2025, when it was not accredited. However, it alleged that Rs 415 crore was only a portion of proceeds of crime and that Siddiqui, the lone decision-maker of the trust, was key to mapping the entire financial network.
The Delhi Crime Branch had booked Siddiqui and the trust on allegations that it cheated aspirants, students, parents, guardians, stakeholders, and the general public by claiming recognition by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
The FIR alleged that Al-Falah was accredited only as a private state university and had never applied for inclusion under Section 12(B) of the UGC Act, which allows private institutions to be eligible for grants from the central government.
(Edited by Tony Rai)