More than 100 booked over attack at NIA team detaining a cleric in Jhansi

'A crowd of people from the locality pushed the NIA team, freed Khalid and took him with them. Later, he was detained by the NIA,' Jhansi Additional Superintendent of Police (City) Gyanendra Singh said.

Jhansi (UP): A total of 111 people were booked, 11 of them named, on Friday for allegedly forcibly freeing a cleric detained by the National Investigation Agency for questioning here, police said.

Jhansi Additional Superintendent of Police (City) Gyanendra Singh told PTI that an NIA team had on Thursday raided Mufti Khalid's house and detained him for questioning in a foreign funding case.

"On receiving this information, a crowd of people from the locality pushed the NIA team, freed Khalid and took him with them. Later, he was detained by the NIA," Singh said.

He said a case has been registered against 11 named and 100 unknown men and women on charges of attacking the NIA team with weapons, obstructing government, work and freeing a person taken into custody.

The NIA conducted searches at 19 locations across the country on Thursday as part of its probe into a case of conspiracy by Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammad.

The searches were carried out in Assam, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, the central probe agency said.

During the searches, several incriminating documents and electronic devices, including mobile phones, pen drives, CDs and hard disks were seized, it said.

Searches were conducted in Goalpara in Assam, Aurangabad in Mumbai and Amravati in Maharashtra, Jhansi, Bareilly, Deoband and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Sitamarhi in Bihar, Hooghly in West Bengal, Baramulla, Reasi, Budgam and Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir, Dungarpur in Rajasthan, and Mehsana in Gujarat, it said.