NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has arrested SDPI national president MK Faizy under the anti-money laundering law, official sources said on Tuesday.The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), founded in 2009 and headquartered in Delhi, is alleged to be the political front of the now banned Popular Front of India (PFI).Faizy, according to the sources, was taken into custody on Monday night from the Delhi international airport under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).The ED had earlier called SDPI as the “political front” of PFI.The PFI was banned by the Union government in September, 2022 calling it an “unlawful association.”Before the ban came, simultaneous raids and enforcement action were conducted against the PFI by multiple probe agencies, including the ED, NIA and various state police forces.The SDPI, however, denies such a link and calls itself an independent outfit.According to the SDPI, Faizy is among the founder leaders of the organisation and was elected its national president in 2018. He is a Islamic scholar and a political observer who served as a Masjid Imam in the 1980s, it said on its portal.The organisation, according to officials in the investigative agencies, has “strong” influence in various pockets of Kerala and Karnataka and some other south Indian states.The ED, as part of its probe against the PFI in 2022, had linked Faizy with a Kerala-based PFI leader named Abdul Razak BP who is alleged to have “transferred” Rs 2 lakh to the SDPI national president as part of the fund raising activities of his (Razak’s) organisation.
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