AGRA : The UP’s Special Task Force (STF), probing the allegation on four PFI men to “incite caste riots” in the state, on Thursday moved a local court to scrap a case registered against them at Hathras’s Chandpa police station, leaving the probe agency with just one case to deal with and giving the accused some hope of bail in near future.

The other FIR with the same sections- including the stringent sedition and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) – is registered at Mathura police station and the probe in that case will continue.

On Thursday, the STF moved an application before Chief Judicial Magistrate of Hathras, Shiv Kumari, informing that it wants to close the FIR filed at Hathras’s Chandpa police station. The agency also asked the court to cancel the judicial remand of the accused in the case, defence lawyer Madhuvan Dutt Chaturvedi told TOI.

Accepting the STF plea, the court ordered the cancellation of judicial remand of the accused in the Chandpa case and directed the district jail authorities to mention it in their records. The accused are now technically released in one of the two cases filed against them. So, now, the four accused will have to file for bail in just one case, and not in two. In its application, the STF stated the FIR registered at Chandpa police station has been merged with the FIR registered at Mathura’s Maant police station.

The four alleged PFI activists, Siddiqui Kappan, 41, a journalist with a Malayalam-language news site in Delhi, Atikur Rahman, 28 of Muzaffarnagar, Masood Ahmad, 28, from Bahraich and Aalam, 37, from Rampur, were booked on October 5 by Mathura police while they were on way to Hathras to meet the family of the 19-year-old Dalit rape-murder victim. Their names were later included in the case registered at Chandpa police station in Hathras on October 4.