Police personnel detain PFI members who had gathered to protest against the raids. (Express Photo: Sushant Kulkarni)At least 40 members of the Popular Front of India (PFI) were detained as the organisation launched protest in Maharashtra’s Pune city Friday against the nationwide action launched by the investigation agencies Thursday.
The protest was held at the Pune District Collectorate from where 40 people were detained by the police, senior inspector Pratap Mankar said.
As the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched nationwide anti-terror raids against the PFI, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) too launched a crackdown and conducted raids at 12 places, including Pune and Mumbai, and arrested 20 people related to the PFI.
In Pune, the searches were conducted at the premises related to the PFI in Kondhwa. Among the 20 arrested by the ATS, two were from Pune.
These raids were being conducted against the people being probed for alleged involvement in organising terror camps and recruiting youth to join terror activities. As part of the searches, as many as 100 people linked to the PFI were arrested by the central and state agencies together, officials said.
Meanwhile, a division bench of the Kerala High Court Friday initiated suo motu contempt of court proceedings against the PFI and its state general secretary A. Abdul Sathar after “taking note of the illegal call for hartal’’ made by the outfit in Kerala.
The bench said the action of the PFI and its general secretary in calling the flash hartal without following the procedure as per “our earlier order of 2019, prima facie, amounts to contempt of the directions of this court.”
This comes a day after the NIA raided the premises linked to the PFI in several states.
Several top PFI leaders and functionaries have been arrested during the raids in 10 states, including in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.