AGRA: Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (UP-STF) on Friday claimed to have arrested an “active member” of the banned radical outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) from Malappuram district of Kerala for “hatching a conspiracy to foment riots” in the aftermath of the murder of a 19-year-old Dalit girl in Hathras a little over two years ago. The family of the girl had then alleged she was gang-raped and brutalised before being killed. The CBI after its investigation had filed a chargesheet under 376-D (gang-rape), 376-A (rape and inflicting injury which cause death), 302 (murder), 34 (criminal act done by several persons). The latest development in the sensational case comes a day after a local court in Hathras convicted the main accused for culpable homicide —not rape — and acquitted three others of all charges.
“The accused, Kamal KP, was carrying a reward of Rs 25,000 and was involved in a conspiracy to trigger violence after the Hathras incident in September 2020. He is an active member and among the top leaders of the PFI,” said Prashant Kumar, additional DGP (law and order), on Friday after the arrest in Kerala.
Kamal was apprehended in connection with a case registered at Mant police station of Mathura district on October 7, 2020. He was charged under various sections of the IPC, IT Act and UAPA. “The entire case was transferred to the STF for detailed investigation,” said a senior officer with Mathura police.
According to a senior UP-STF officer privy to the investigation, Kamal had allegedly sent a voice note to hold a “secret meeting to incite violence after the Hathras incident”. Police said that the purported voice note was recovered from the mobile phone of Siddique Kappan, a Kerala-based journalist, who was arrested on his way to Hathras to cover the incident and booked under the stringent UAPA. He had to spend over two years in jail and was granted bail by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The UP-STF officer added, “Kamal was also connected to Badruddin, leader of the ‘PFI hit squad’ who was caught in Lucknow with explosives earlier.”
In an affidavit filed in the top court in response to a notice on Kappan’s bail plea on August 29 last year, the UP-STF said that Badruddin, “a close associate” of Kappan and “one Firoz (both co-accused) were arrested in Lucknow with explosives”. It further stated that the two were members of the “PFI hit squad funded by Rauf Sharif (national general secretary of Campus Front of India, PFI’s student wing) and Kamal KP, and were advised by the petitioner to target (certain) organisations…”
On September 14, 2020, the victim was allegedly “dragged into a farm, gang-raped and assaulted” by four upper-caste men at a village in Hathras, leaving her with multiple fractures, deep gashes on the body and tongue, and paralysis. It eventually led to her death on September 29 in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital. In her dying declaration before a magistrate in Aligarh, she had “named the four accused”.
Her body had then been hurriedly cremated past midnight in an open field near her house, with senior police officers and administration officials present.