New Delhi: The Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday conducted a search at the offices of the Popular Front of India in New Delhi.
The search operation comes after police interrogated PFI youth leader Rauf Sherif in connection with a money laundering case.
The police also raided the PFI office on February 21. Sherif is the general secretary of the student wing of PFI called Campus Front India (CFI).
Speaking to ETV Bharat, PFI's Delhi office manager Mohammad Kaif said that the UP STF did not raid their office.
"They came here to confirm if Anshad was a PFI member. After getting the confirmation, they returned. There was no raid at our office," he said.
The Uttar Pradesh STF had said it had recovered material used in making bombs from the two PFI members in Lucknow.
Earlier, the STF had searched the office of PFI in February this year. The UP Police in October last year had arrested four people linked to PFI and CFI from Mathura when they were going to Hathras to meet the family members of the 19-year-old Dalit victim, who died during treatment at a hospital in the national capital.
The UP Police, in October last year, had confirmed that a part of the probe into Hathras case was being handed over to the UP STF. The STF is probing all 19 FIRs -- six in Hathras and the remaining in Bijnor, Bulandshahr, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Mathura, Shamli and Saharanpur -- lodged in connection with unlawful protest and inciting hatred on social media.
On the basis of the UP Police, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had also registered a case of money laundering and filed a charge sheet against several office-bearers of the PFI and CFI.
In a remand report submitted in the court in Kerala, the ED had alleged that KA Rauf Sherif, who is the national general secretary of CFI, had funded the trip of Sidhique Kappan, a Delhi-based Kerala journalist, and three other alleged PFI activists to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh, where a Dalit woman died after being allegedly gang-raped.
It was alleged they had ulterior motives of disturbing social harmony and inciting communal riots and were charged with serious offences including sedition. The Uttar Pradesh government has been demanding a ban on the PFI, accusing it of inciting riots in the state during the protests against the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act.
(With inputs from IANS)
ALSO READ: UP Special Task Force raids PFI office at Shaheen Bagh
