Pak-based Dawat-e-Islami raised Rs 20 lakh in a month from Rajasthan villages

Pakistan-based Dawat-e-Islami, which is under the scanner in the brutal Udaipur killing case, collected Rs 20 lakh in donations from some border villages and towns of Rajasthan in just about a month this year, sources in the security establishment said on Thursday.

Also, an instance of a politician from the desert state allegedly donating about Rs 2 lakh to the organisation is under the radar of agencies probing the case.

When contacted by PTI, the politician, who is not being identified, said he would soon revert but later on did not answer calls or messages.

The officials said the agencies have flagged a number of recent propaganda and radical activities of the organisation in the border areas of Jaisalmer and Barmer, including Rs 20 lakh it collected in donations from locals in the Jaisalmer district in April alone.

The organisation, the sources said, collected funds in the name of charitable Islamic works.

Their footprints were found in other border districts of the state, and as far as in the forward areas of Gujarat and even some regions of Jammu and Kashmir.

The sources said the agencies also found that the organisation distributed some literature, in the online and hard copy mode, targeting border population especially those in the younger age group.

The Karachi-based Dawat-e-Islami's website says the outfit was established in 1981.

On its website, the outfit describes itself as a "global non-political Islamic organisation working for the propagation of the Quran and Sunnah throughout the globe”.

One of the two prime accused in the brutal killing of tailor Kanhaiya Lal Teli in Udaipur on Tuesday, Ghouse Mohammad, has links with the Pakistan-based organisation, Rajasthan DGP ML Lather had said.

Ghouse, Lather said, had visited Karachi in 2014.

Ghouse and Riaz Akhtari allegedly hacked Teli to death with a cleaver at his shop in Udaipur and posted videos online saying they are avenging an insult to Islam.

The National Investigation Agency has now taken over probe in the case and said the two wanted to "strike terror among the masses across the country".

Some of the cadres of Dawat-e-Islami have been found to be involved in terror incidents, including the assassination of Pakistan's Punjab province Governor Salman Taseer in 2011.