Four from Nurul’s campaign team held

Barely days after two of her campaign team members were detained for allegedly impersonating EC officials, two more have been hauled up.

Kuala Lumpur: Four more members of Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar’s campaign team were arrested, this time for allegedly masquerading as civil servants while conducting a door-to-door voter survey in the constituency.

According to Nurul’s political secretary Fahmi Fadzil, six volunteers were making their rounds at the Sri Pahang flats in Bangsar Utama this morning when four of them were allegedly confronted by members from the Umno Lembah Pantai division.

Exact details of what transpired after that are still unknown but police arrived at the scene and hauled the four to the Travers police station.

“The police are refusing to reveal the reason for their arrest but from what we understand the four are being accused of masquerading as civil servants,” Fahmi said.

“We are still trying to get more information because we have been denied access to them. There are lawyers present at the police station but are also not allowed to speak to them,” he added.

The four have been identified as Nanthakumar Panisalbon, Gopal Dass Manoharan, Shamsudin Yusof and Gurmit Singh Ranjit Singh.

Fahmi also said that the police are demanding that the remaining two volunteers also be present at the station for questioning.

Today’s arrest is a repeat of a similar one just three days ago when two men working for Nurul were arrested over allegations that they were impersonating Election Commission (EC) officers.

A police source told FMT that police action was taken following reports by a number of residents in the area that the six were impersonating EC officials.

“We have not arrested them, only brought them in for questioning,” he said.

However, he admitted that the four were wearing tags identifying them as members of Nurul’s team and not that as EC officials.

“But if they were not doing anything wrong then why did two of them flee the scene?” he asked.