Campus Front leader held from Kerala funded Hathras trip of Malayali journalist, three others : ED

A Campus Front of India leader held from Kerala by the Enforcement Directorate on Saturday allegedly funded the trip of Delhi-based Malayali journalist Siddique Kappan and Popular Front of India activists to Hathras in UP.

According to the remand report submitted by ED before special court for PLMA cases in Kochi, K A Rauf Sherif, who is national general secretary of Campus Front, received Rs 2.51 crore in his bank accounts through various sources, including Rs 29 lakh as foreign remittance.

The ED report said that Siddique and three others carried out the trip to Hathras to meet the family of rape-murder victim as per the direction of Rauf, who sent money for this purpose to Atiq-ur-Rehman, who was a member in the delegation and a former treasures of CFI.

Rauf was held by ED from Thiruvananthapuram airport on Saturday while trying to board a flight to Muscat. A native of Anchal on the suburbs of Kollam district, he case under ED probe owing to the heavy cash transactions during the lockdown days.

The ED report also said that the cash remittances to the accounts were mentioned as payment for hotel stay and hence it was suspected that Rauf could be owning a hotel either in India or Oman. But ED was suspicions over this as most hotels remained defunct during the lockdown days and around Rs 30 lakh were received during April-May this year. Hence the remittance were suspected to proceeds of any crime.

Rauf made the bid to leave for Muscat even as he did not appear before ED for quizzing despite repeated summons.

ED was also learnt to probing whether Rauf was among those who funded the anti-CAA protest in Delhi.

Earlier there were allegations that Campus Front used to woo cadres from campuses in Kerala by offering cash and even two-wheelers. They even managed to make their presence felt in some of the prominent college campuses in the state. CFI activists were also accused in the murder of a SFI leader at the Maharajas College in Kochi in 2018.