ARNEWS & ARLYRICS

The UP Special Task Force on Sunday raided the Delhi offices of Popular Front of India (PFI) and its student wing — Campus Front of India (CFI). This comes days after a court in Mathura sent CFI leader Rauf Shareef to police custody for five days in connection to alleged funding of PFI members for “creating unrest after the Hathras gangrape incident”.

The PFI condemned the raid, calling it “a part of the ongoing harassment launched against the outfit by the UP government”.
The STF said the raid was conducted on the basis of the information retrieved during interrogation.

“Now, we know that these people have a disruptive tendency and therefore, we need to conduct such searches. The raid was based on the information received from those under our custody, including Rauf Shareef. The raid might continue depending upon the information that Rauf gives,” ADG (STF) Amitabh Yash said.

The official said the raid was conducted at the PFI’s Shaheen Bagh office in Delhi and nearby rooms after obtaining a search warrant from a court.

In a statement, PFI general secretary Anis Ahmed said that the STF did not follow any legal process and did not show the search warrant, nor gave the seizure report to the office staffs.

Earlier, Shareef was brought from Ernakulam jail in Kerala where he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in December in a money laundering case.

In a remand report submitted at a Kerala court, the ED had alleged that Shareef had funded the trip of Siddique Kappan, a Delhi-based Kerala journalist, who was arrested along with three others by Uttar Pradesh Police while on their way to Hathras following the gangrape and death of a Dalit woman.