The Mumbai Crime Branch’s probe into the fake BARC scientist case has uncovered explosive details about frequent foreign travel and suspicious financial inflows spanning more than two decades.
Investigators said the accused, Akhtar Hussain Qutubuddin Ahmed, 60, who allegedly posed as a scientist with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), had travelled abroad multiple times on a forged passport, visiting Iran nearly 20 times, Saudi Arabia around 15 times, and making several trips to Moscow, Russia, and Thailand.
Officials also found that Ahmed and his brother, Adil Hussain, operated multiple bank accounts, including one in a private bank where large foreign transactions dating back to 2001 were detected. Akhtar was earlier arrested from Yari Road, Versova, while Adil was taken into custody by the Delhi Police.
Sources revealed that foreign remittances began as early as 1996, allegedly originating from countries like the United States, Iran, and Iraq. “The transactions post-2001 appear highly irregular, with repeated inflows from unidentified foreign sources,” said a Crime Branch officer, requesting anonymity.
Investigators suspect that the brothers had been receiving foreign funding since the mid-1990s, possibly through layered international accounts to conceal the true source of the money.
The housing society in Versova, where Akhtar Hussain Qutubuddin Ahmed resided with his wife and nine-year-old son. Pic/Ashish Raje
During interrogation, the Hussain brothers allegedly claimed to possess sensitive documents and maps related to BARC and other nuclear facilities, which they may have used to extract money from foreign contacts. Police suspect that the payments were routed through intermediaries.
The Crime Branch has now written to the banks concerned, seeking transaction records, KYC details, and information on closed accounts to determine the total amount of money received from abroad.
The investigation also revealed that Adil Hussain had instructed co-accused Munazir Khan — who forged fake identity documents — to prepare fraudulent papers for several individuals. Copies of these forged documents were recovered from Khan’s laptop, and police are examining the purpose behind their creation.
Officials further suspect that Adil may have visited an enemy nation as early as 1999, and efforts are underway to verify his travel and criminal history from 2003 onwards. His brother Akhtar, meanwhile, faces a separate case at Meerut’s Kanker Kheda police station for waging war against the Uttar Pradesh government and spreading hatred and disaffection.
