Is PFI Trying To Fish In Troubled Waters Of Hathras?

Are unsocial elements, especially those belonging to fundamentalist and extremist ideologies, trying to fish in the troubled waters at UP’s Hathras? The place is in the eye of the storm after a Dalit girl’s alleged rape and death by a few persons belonging to the Thakur community. The place has been on the boil ever since the UP police forced the parents of the girl to cremate her in the dead of the night.

On Tuesday night, the police arrested four persons, all members of the Popular Front of India, which has funded the anti-CAA protests and the East Delhi riots, at the Mathura toll gate. They were identified as Atiqur Rehman from Muzaffarnagar, Siddique Kappan from Mallappuram in Kerala, Masood Ahmed from Bahraich in UP and Alam from Rampur. On interrogation, it was found that they were members of the Campus front of India, which is an affiliate of the PFI. The Campus Front of India provided the muscle to the anti-CAA protests and was involved in the arson inside Jamia Millia Islamia.

The arrests come a day after UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath claimed that anarchist elements were trying to foment trouble in UP. He said they were trying to trigger communal and casteist trouble in the state. Meanwhile, Delhi Journalists Union has said that Siddique Kappan was a journalist associated with an Islamic paper Azhi Muqam and was on way to report on Hathras. It wanted the UP government to release Kappan.