The Uttar Pradesh Police said on Sunday that it would seek custody of Popular Front of India’s student wing leader Rauf Shareef, arrested in Kerala by the Enforcement Directorate, in connection with a case of funding and stirring up protests after the assault and death of a young woman in Hathras.
“Rauf Shareef is wanted in the Hathras case and a team will be sent to bring him here after the ED (Enforcement Directorate) completes its work,” UP’s Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar told PTI.
Shareef, the general secretary of PFI student wing Campus Front of India, was arrested by the ED at Trivandrum airport on Saturday in a money laundering case.
The Uttar Pradesh Police claimed that the four people arrested on their way to Hathras in October were acting at the behest of Shareef. The UP Police had on November 18 issued a lookout notice against Shareef.
Kerala journalist Siddique Kappan and three others were arrested in Mathura when they were on their way to Hathras after the assault and death of the 19-year-old Dalit woman.
The death of the woman and her cremation by the authorities in the dead of the night without her family’s consent triggered a nationwide outrage.
The PFI had been accused of funding protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act across the country earlier this year. ( PTI )
