The Uttar Pradesh Police have arrested three women from Kerala who had visited the state to meet their relatives who were detained in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act case, The News Minute reported on Tuesday.

The police arrested them on September 25 for allegedly producing fake RT-PCR coronavirus test certificates. The three women have been identified as Muhsina (31), her mother-in-law Naseema (62) and Haleema (65). Muhsina and Naseema are from the Pathanamthitta district, while Haleema is from Malappuram.

Muhsina’s seven-year-old son Athif was also arrested. She also has a two-year-old daughter Danwa Mariyam, who is at her home in Pathanamthitta.

The police have filed a first information report against the three women under sections of the Indian Penal Code related to cheating and forgery.

According to the FIR, a laboratory in Ghaziabad, where the women claimed to have done the tests, has denied having issued the reports. The FIR, however, does not name the laboratory.

Muhsina’s husband Anshad Badruddin and Haleema’s son Firoz Khan have been in a jail in Uttar Pradesh since February. The police have accused them of planning bomb blasts in Uttar Pradesh.

Badruddin’s brother Azhar has alleged a conspiracy to frame the women, according to The News Minute. He claimed that on September 24, Badruddin and Khan were scheduled to be presented before a court, but the police did not do so.

“The next day, on September 25, the families went to the prison where the duo are lodged, seeking to meet them there,” Azhar said. “But the police did not allow this either. So they came back to the room where they were staying. However, later that evening, the police came back and arrested three of them.”

He said that the validity of the tests conducted in Kerala had expired, and so the families underwent tests in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad.

Azhar said that the families do not know which prison the women are lodged and only know that they are somewhere in Lucknow.

Among the others who were part of the group that went to meet the men incarcerated under the UAPA were family members of one of the arrested women – her son Firoz Khan’s wife Saujath and their four children, according to Maktoob Media. The group reportedly said that all the tests were conducted at the same lab.

KC Naseer, lawyer accompanying the family, asked how only three out of ten certificates turned out to be fake.