Bengaluru, June 2 (Bureau) Condemning the provisional attachment of the bank accounts belonging to the organization by ED, the Popular Front of India on Thursday said the latest action is part of the ongoing repressive steps taken against it for the past few years.”It becomes once again clear that the agency is acting as mere pawns of the political masters by going after people’s movements, NGOs, human rights organizations, opposition parties, media, and any democratic voices in the country that are critical of the ruling party,” Karnataka PFI General Secretary Anis Ahmed told reporters here.The deposits as mentioned by the ED for the duration of 13 years are nothing but normal for the functioning of a nationwide social movement like PFI, he said.However, noted Muslim leader and social activist Alam Pasha disagreed with PFI saying that the central government cannot be termed as behaving in a repressive manner because it can only facilitate the investigation agency like the Enforcement Directorate in its probe, not freeze bank accounts of any organisation.”PFI is creating confusion by saying that the freezing of PFI bank accounts is a repressive step of the central government.
The government can only facilitate the investigating agencies for probing further, it cannot freeze or take any punitive action. Only the ED has the authority to do so. Therefore, the alegations that central government is taking repressive steps against PFI is uncalled for,” he said.The ED has all the powers to freeze PFI’s accounts if they find that the Islamic organisation is indulging in communal propagation of a religion instead of serving the community as per laws, Pasha, who is also a noted indutrialist said.If PFI feels that the ED has acted indiscrimnately, it can approach the courts to seek justice, instead of going before the media and hitting the streets, he said. “The PFI should move the courts and prove ED’s freezing of its bank accounts is illegal with relevant documents,” Pasha said.He also said the PFI should prove the amount that the ED has freezed was collected to carry out exemplary relief and rescue services instead of levelling baseless allegations.The PFI General Secretary Ahmed said the freezed amount was deposited during the collection drives for major calamities faced by the country in which PFI carried out exemplary relief and rescue services.”The stated figures by the ED are not at all astonishing and no great investigation is needed by an agency like ED as we have already filed every penny of the collections to the income tax.
This proves it is nothing but sensationalizing of figures,” he said.Another important fact to be noted is that during 2020 many media reported that Rs 120 crore wascollected by PFI, the current statement of Rs 60 crore however negates the earlier fake claim and proves that these agencies feed fake information to media to target organizations like PFI, Ahmed said.The bank accounts of world-renowned NGOs like Amnesty International and Green Peace were also frozen in the same manner, PFI Secretary Mohammad Shaki said.”There is already a trend in the country that corrupt politicians from all parties are joining the BJP to save their tainted wealth, fearing the ED vendetta in the form of investigations,” he alleged.Corruption and black money dealings of BJP leaders to the tune of hundreds of crores are hardly a matter of concern for ED, Shaki said.Going by the way the BJP has always misused the ED and other agencies to target and silence opposition, the action against PFI is not surprising, he said.The uncompromising stand PFI has taken against Sangh Parivar’s divisive politics is the only reason the organisation have become the target of the agency’s politically-motivated cases, Shaki said.”PFI will continue with our assertive stand and opposition to the evil designs of the RSS. These actions will not intimidate us and we will explore legal and democratic options to overcome these hindrances,” PFI SEcretary AK Ashraf said.PFI calls upon the people of the country who are committed to protecting democracy to condemn this undemocratic move and misuse of power by the central government, he said.