PFI says journalist Siddique Kappan, four others named in ED chargesheet are not its members

New Delhi: The Popular Front of India (PFI) on Friday claimed that those named in a chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate are not its members. A prosecution complaint (chargesheet) was filed by the central probe agency before a special court in Lucknow on Wednesday under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The ED had said it has named five members of PFI and its student wing Campus Front of India in the complaint and the court has issued summons to them for an appearance on 18 March after taking cognisance of the chargesheet. “Members/office bearers of other organisations are portrayed as Popular Front office bearers. This is not an innocent mistake at all,” PFI general secretary Anis Ahmed claimed in a statement. “Instead of proving its case through transparent investigations, ED continues to drag the name of Popular Front into fabricated and politically motivated case like the imaginary ‘instigation of caste violence’ at Hathras,” the statement said. Those charge-sheeted included PFI member and Campus Front of India (CFI) national general secretary KA Rauf Sherif, CFI national treasurer Atikur Rahman, Delhi CFI general secretary Masud Ahmed, a journalist “associated with PFI” Siddique Kappan, and Mohammed Alam, who is a member of the CFI and the PFI. Rauf was arrested by the agency from an airport in Kerala in December last year while he was “trying to flee the country”. The rest four were arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police in Mathura last year while they were on their way to Hathras after the alleged gangrape and murder of a Dalit woman in that district of Uttar Pradesh. The ED, in a statement issued on Thursday, had claimed that those charge-sheeted wanted to “incite communal riots, disturb communal harmony and spread terror” in the aftermath of the Hathras incident.