ED arrests PFI member from Kozhikode airport in money laundering case

The Enforcement Directorate apprehended a Popular Front of India (PFI) member at Kerala's Kozhikode airport while he was "trying to flee the country" in connection with a money laundering case.

The Enforcement Directorate has arrested a PFI member from Kerala’s Kozhikode airport while he was “trying to flee the country” as the agency probes him in a money laundering case linked to alleged raising of foreign funds for "anti-national" activities, official sources said on Saturday.

The immigration authorities at the airport had intercepted Abdul Razzak BP, a divisional president of the Popular Front of India's Perumpadappu unit in Malappuram, on March 9, acting on an Enforcement Directorate lookout circular (LOC) issued against him.

The next day, the agency produced him before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Lucknow, which remanded him to seven days of ED custody, the agency officials said.

Premises linked to Razzak and others were searched by the federal probe agency in December last year and "incriminating documents were seized."

Razzak has been accused by the ED of "raising funds from abroad as well as within the country for PFI's anti-national activities."

The PFI has called the arrest “illegal and ill-motivated”.

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