Lawyer questions arrests in PFI links, says UP police have no concrete evidence

After the UP Police arrested 108 members of the Muslim extremist organisation Popular Front of India (PFI) for their alleged role in inciting violence in Uttar Pradesh, Riyasat Ali, advocating for those detained, said that the evidence presented before the court by the police are not concrete.

New Delhi: Riyasat Ali, a Meerut-based advocate has claimed that arrests made in the last few days by Uttar Pradesh police have no links with Popular Front of India (PFI) as the pieces of evidence presented by the cops in court here are not concrete.

Speaking to ETV Bharat, Ali, advocating for those detained in the light of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) said, "The evidence presented in the court against the people alleging they have links with PFI are some papers which are either handwritten or printed without any name of the printing press."

Riyasat Ali said those pieces of evidence do not even have any individual's name or any organisation's name through which it can be proved that those who are allegedly arrested have links with PFI.

He further added that such pieces of evidence don't help in proving them guilty as they have no value in law and hoped of getting justice from the court.

A five-member team from Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) conducted a fact-finding result in all districts of Western Uttar Pradesh - Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Bijnor and met the people who lost their family members during the CAA protests which occurred on December 18, 19 and 20, 2019.

Anuradha, a fact-finding team member from WSS, said, on the three days in question, we observed that a pattern of police action appears on the record. In the name of preventing protests, the police were armed and prepared to kill. The course of gradual escalation of force was evident and immediate shots to the head and chest were preferred.

While sharing the alleged police brutality she further added, " the use of armed civil clothed men euphemistically called 'police Mitr' by the UP Police has created a sense of terror among the people in the region. Such state-sponsored vigilante groups add to the impunity of the state and police, and ensure perpetuation violence and terror."

She said we also demand the government to constitute a team of retired judges to investigate the case and police atrocities and excess, withdrawal of false cases against Muslim youth, registration of FIRs on all cases of deaths and detentions.