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15 PFI men held for stoking communal tension in Karnataka, say officials
Police commissioner CH Pratap Reddy said the suspects were picked up for questioning in connection with a suo motu case registered at the city’s KG Halli police station.
Police have detained 15 Popular Front of India (PFI) workers on charges of spreading communal hatred and hatching criminal conspiracies, officers said on Friday.
Police commissioner CH Pratap Reddy said the suspects were picked up for questioning in connection with a suo motu case registered at the city’s KG Halli police station.
The commissioner maintained that the detention was not part of the nationwide raids conducted by the NIA against terror-funding suspects.
Reddy said based on certain credible inputs of the NIA and central agencies, the city police registered a first information report (FIR) against 19 PFI members at KG Halli police station in Bengaluru East on Wednesday.
“The FIR identified 19 men from different places of the state. They are from Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Dakshina Kannada, Shivamogga, Davanagere and Koppal. Out of 19 suspects, we managed to detain 15, including two from Bengaluru. The remaining 13 will be brought to the city for further investigation,” said Reddy.
According to Reddy, the suspects were booked under different sections of IPC for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc and doing acts prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony and criminal conspiracy.
On Thursday, the NIA carried out raids at the offices of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and PFI and residences of their key office-bearers in Karnataka, detaining some of them, officials said.
Simultaneous raids were conducted in Mysuru, Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada, Shivamogga, Kalaburagi, Davanagere, Raichur and Koppal, according to Karnataka police.
Karnataka home minister Araga Jnanendra on Thursday said the procedure to impose a permanent ban on PFI and SDPI has begun at the central government level.
“Everyone knows about the misdeeds that SDPI and PFI organisations are indulging in. The world should know how they manage to get funds and who backs them. To clean the mess that had been created by them, raids were very much necessary,” the minister said.
“These organisations have grown to this proportion only with the direct and indirect support of the Congress party all these years. If these organisations have to be cut to size, one should not look at religion, caste, loss or profit. Everyone should cooperate,” he added.
