An NGO called “IMANA Cares” is collecting crores of Rupees in donations for Covid relief, but something doesn’t look right

The Covid-19 crisis of India has given the opportunity to many noble and selfless organisations to step up and serve humanity. They are working day and night to ensure that the lives of ordinary Indian citizens are made less miserable. What the second wave of the pandemic has also given rise to, however, are fraudulent organisations and thug-like NGOs who are prying upon ordinary people and scamming them in the name of Covid relief work. At fault also are unaware citizens, who are mindlessly donating to such fraudulent organisations without any basic study of what the NGO is and how it operates.

One particular America-based NGO has especially courted controversy in India, by specifically targeting the country’s youth on Instagram. The Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) has been running paid advertisements on Instagram, and even coughing up money to paid influencers and promoters on the platform to share its posts and stories. IMANA Cares was found to have gone tremendously popular in India overnight a few days ago, and has since been getting tremendous traction and support from India’s youngsters.

Mind you, the NGO is an American one, with the stated objective of having Muslim physicians treat Muslim patients. IMANA has partnered with ISNA and coincidentally even their partners are dedicated to the betterment of Muslim society alone. Interestingly, ISNA got its charity status revoked in 2018 by Canadian authorities for ‘non-compliance’ and also for having links to the Hizbul Mujahideen, which is waging a war against the Indian state in Kashmir. To put it simply, Indians have been sharing posts and promoting the fundraiser of an NGO which has ties to the ISNA, which in turn has been caught funding Islamist terror groups in Jammu and Kashmir.

As of the moment this report was filed, the website of IMANA Cares (https://imana.org/) remained non-functional, and they cited “technical difficulties due to unprecedented traffic” as the reason for their website not functioning. However, such technical difficulties are easily overcome by normal organisations. IMANA’s website has been down for hours on end. This, after chatter began in India of the NGO in fact, duping Indians under the garb of Covid relief work and the ‘Help India Breathe’ campaign.

Speaking of the ‘Help India Breathe’ campaign, IMANA Cares started a fundraiser on Instagram. Interestingly, Instagram fundraisers have not yet been made operational in Indian jurisdiction. To overcome this hurdle, IMANA directed well-intentioned scapegoats to a separate link listed on their bio. Here, however, the list of donors hardly has any Indians. So, although Indians have been donating to the NGO, why are they not being listed?

What is even more dubious is the fact that IMANA Cares has no less than three times changed their targets on the Instagram fundraiser. This, because they were able to allegedly fool Indians in large numbers, and seeing the popularity of their fundraiser, kept on raising their targets. The possibility of them having swindled away large sums of money only increases due to their continuous enhancement of targets. Initially, IMANA Cares aimed for ₹1.8 crore as the total amount to be collected, which on the same day was increased to ₹3 crore and later to & ₹5.6 crore by the organisation.

There is a huge possibility that Indians have been duped by the American NGO, whose primary aim is to serve Muslims in the United States. Interestingly, many of those who seem to have contributed to IMANA are the same individuals who continuously spin conspiracy theories regarding the PM Cares Fund in India.