Absconding PFI students’ wing leader arrested from Bengaluru

Guwahati / Bengaluru: An absconding leader of the students’ wing of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI), an Islamic organisation, has been arrested from Bengaluru, Assam Police said on Saturday.

The Campus Front of India (CFI) leader, Amir Hamja, was apprehended by a team of Assam police headed by a DSP rank officer at Bellundur area of Bengaluru where he was in hiding with some families from Tripura by a team of Assam Police led by a DSP-rank officer on Friday night, it said.

Hamja has been given three days’ transit remand by the additional chief metropolitan magistrate of the southern city and is being brought to Guwahati, Assam police said in a statement.

“He will be produced before the chief judicial magistrate, Guwahati, on Monday,” it said.

Hamja, a resident of Baksa district of Assam, absconded soon after the ban on PFI. Assam Police traced and apprehended him with the help of Bengaluru police, the statement added.

At least 40 PFI activists have been nabbed from different parts of the state so far. The police have already sealed the outfit’s Assam’s head office in Hatigaon area here as well as its local offices at Karimganj and Baksa following the ban on the outfit by the Centre.