Indian police raid Amnesty office over ‘foreign fund violations’

NEW DELHI: Amnesty International yesterday accused the Indian government of seeking to ‘instill fear’ among rights groups after police raided one of its offices over alleged violations of foreign funding rules.

Enforcement Directorate investigators searched the Amnesty office in the southern city of Bangalore for several hours on Thursday. Similar action has been taken against the environmental pressure group Greenpeace.

The directorate, which investigates financial crimes, said the international rights watchdog was suspected of having channelled 360 million rupees (US$$4.8 million) into the country in violation of funding rules.

A directorate official confirmed the raid and said Amnesty had breached rules by ‘floating a commercial entity’ to bring in money from abroad.

Amnesty insisted that it was ‘compliant’ with government rules in a Twitter statement however and slammed what it called a ‘disturbing pattern’ in the action of the authorities.

“It is clear that the government wants to instill fear among civil society organisations,” said Amnesty, which has its headquarters in London. — AFP