AGRA / LUCKNOW: A five-member team Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (UPSTF) filed a charge sheet for a 5,000 page document against eight members of the Front of India Campus (CFI), Student Wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI), before a Mathura court on Saturday, accusing them of receiving funds from abroad to foment caste riots in Hathras in the wake of the alleged gang rape of a 19-year-old girl who led to their death in September 2020. They were slapped on charges of sedition along with the strict Illicit Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The charge sheet was accepted and the court set May 1 as the next hearing date.
Five of the eight members accused by the STF they were brought before the Mathura court. Among them were the journalist Siddique Kappan, Masood Ahmad, Atiq-ur-Rahman, Mohammad Alam and Rauf Sharif, while two of them, Anshad Badruddin and Firoz Khan, attended the judicial process through a video link from the prison of Lucknow. The eighth defendant, Danish, has not yet been arrested.
In the 5,000 page charge sheet, PFI members have been accused of receiving funds in the amount of Rs 80 lakh from financial institutions in Muscat and Doha for that purpose.
Defense attorney Madhuvan Datt Chaturvedi told TOI that after completing its investigation in 180 days, the STF submitted its charge sheet listing more than 50 witnesses to additional district court and session judge (1st) Anil Kumar Pandey. Saturday.
“Danish has received a subpoena for the next hearing,” said the lawyer.
“The defendants have dismissed the charges as vague, unfounded and initiated for promoting the ideological agenda of the state government,” said the lawyer, adding that the defendants had verbally complained to the court that the authorities “were misbehaving with them inside the jail and they had not provided them with food for the last 24 hours ”. They also alleged that other prisoners treated them badly.
The lawyer said that according to them they had their last meal around 5 pm on Friday and had not eaten anything since, despite their health condition, which is said to be “critical.” One of them, Kappan, is diabetic, while Atiq-ur-Rehman suffers from aortic regurgitation.
Meanwhile, a STF Officer said: “All the PFI members mentioned above have been booked on charges of sedition, deliberately provoking with the intention of causing riot, injuring or desecrating the place of worship to insult the religion of any group and under the Technology Act of the Information, along with the charges of punishment for fundraising for terrorist act and the UAPA ”.
The charge sheet indicated that materials collected from the defendants’ cell phones and laptops corroborate that they were trying to sow discord in the state by accumulating criminal incidents such as that of Hathras.
Documents were collected during searches at the PFI office in Delhi and evidence was found, the STF said.
.
