Woman with alleged PFI link claims of receiving Rs 3 lakh to record Indore Court proceedings

Police have arrested a 30-year-old woman with alleged ties to the banned organization Popular Front of India (PFI) for taping the proceedings of a court during a hearing in Madhya Pradesh's Indore district on January 29.

According to Additional Commissioner of Police Rajesh Raghuvanshi, the lady, named as Sonu Mansuri, later informed police that a lawyer requested her to make the tape which was to be delivered to the Islamic organisation PFI and for the same she was paid Rs three lakh for the operation.

During the hearing of a case involving Bajrang Dal leader Tanu Sharma on Saturday, his lawyers Amit Pandey and Sunil Vishwakarma observed the lady filming the video in Indore district court room 42, he claimed.

“The advocates got suspicious and with the help of women lawyers caught the woman. They then alerted the MG Road police who detained her on Saturday evening and formally arrested her at night,” he said while talking to the media on January 29. 

Mansuri, an Indore resident, told police that senior counsel Noorjahan Khan assigned her the responsibility of creating the film to be forwarded to the PFI.

The woman also told police that she was paid Rs three lakh for her task, according to the officer, who added that the money had been retrieved. 

"Sonu is being probed as part of the ongoing inquiry to learn more about her connection to the PFI,'' the officer added.

She will appear in court on Sunday afternoon "Raghuvanshi explained. If there is adequate proof, he would also take action against advocate Noorjahan Khan.

It needs mention here that the Centre had banned the PFI and some of its supporters for five years in September 2022 under a strict anti-terror statute, claiming them of having "connection" with global terror organisations like ISIS and spreading sectarian enmity in the country.

Prior to the ban, the NIA, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), and several state police agencies conducted raids on the PFI in a large pan-India campaign, arresting dozens of its leaders and members from various states for allegedly aiding terror activities in the nation.