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INDIA-RIGHTS-CHARITY-POLITICS
Indian police raid rights groups over fund misuse charge
NEW DELHI, July 12, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A legal rights group run by two of
India’s top lawyers Friday accused authorities of trying to intimidate and
silence them after police raided their offices for alleged foreign funding
violations.
Since 2014 Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has suspended or
barred nearly 10,000 non-profit groups from receiving foreign funding,
accusing some of using the funds for “anti-national activities”.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said it had found “certain
incriminating documents” during a search of offices belonging to the non-
profit Lawyers Collective in New Delhi and Mumbai on Thursday.
The group — which is headed by top lawyers Anand Grover and Indira
Jaising — had received and misused $4.7 million in international funding,
the CBI said in a statement.
The agency was acting on a complaint from the home ministry that the NGO
had conspired “with an intent to cheat the government of India” by siphoning
off money it received from abroad.
Lawyers Collective said the raids were “nothing but a vicious means to
humiliate, intimidate and silence its trustees… whose fierce independence
and advocacy for human rights, perturbs the political establishment of the
day.”
Opposition lawmakers called the CBI action the “latest in a long line of
coercion and intimidation” against Jaising and Grover.
The group is the latest to face action after Modi’s nationalist government
launched a crackdown against foreign non-government organisations in 2014
when they assumed power.
A government intelligence report from the same year reportedly said
associations were working with foreign powers to undermine India’s economic
growth.
Modi, re-elected in May, has criticised foreign-backed aid organisations,
terming them “five-star activists”.
BSS/AFP/BZC/2000HRS