The Barakah Foun­da­tion in Ch­agua­nas was placed un­der lock­down yes­ter­day amid an on­go­ing dis­pute over its lead­er­ship and con­trol of its premis­es.

The dis­pute be­gan af­ter the death of the foun­da­tion’s founder, In­shan Ish­mael, in Au­gust last year. His son, Za­akir Ish­mael, was lat­er re­moved as chair­man by the board, spark­ing dis­agree­ments over con­trol of the grounds.

In a pub­lic no­tice, the foun­da­tion said it had no­ti­fied po­lice and that the lock­down would re­main in place un­til fur­ther no­tice. It said the ac­tion was in­tend­ed to re­gain con­trol of the premis­es and re­move peo­ple it al­leged had been placed there with­out prop­er au­thor­i­ty.

The no­tice cit­ed al­leged fi­nan­cial mis­con­duct, fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty and oth­er wrong­do­ing but did not iden­ti­fy any­one in­volved or pro­vide de­tails. The foun­da­tion said po­lice of­fi­cers were on site to en­sure the sit­u­a­tion was han­dled ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

It said the mea­sures were nec­es­sary to pro­tect its as­sets and en­sure its op­er­a­tions were con­duct­ed law­ful­ly and trans­par­ent­ly. The foun­da­tion apol­o­gised for any in­con­ve­nience caused to the pub­lic and said it was com­mit­ted to restor­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty.

It al­so stressed that the foun­da­tion be­longed to the com­mu­ni­ty, not to any in­di­vid­ual.