NEW DELHI: The investigations by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) into multiple cases of the Popular Front of India (PFI), have revealed that the organisation has been operating across in states India. The PFI has been operating with plans to wage an armed war to disintegrate and establish an Islamic Caliphate, sources in the NIA said.
Officials in the NIA said that investigations into five cases, in which chargesheets have already been filed with 105 accused named, revealed that the organisation has also been running its well-established set-up with wings and units, comprising loyal and highly trained cadres of their ‘service teams’, that was pressed into service as ‘executioners’ of the orders pronounced by their parallel Courts, called ‘Dar-ul-Qaza’.
Even in several chargesheet filed in a special court this month, the NIA has maintained, “Investigations have revealed that the PFI acting under the cover of building a mass organisation and a socio-political movement, was actually putting together a highly motivated, trained and secretive elite force within the larger organisation, to achieve its pernicious and violent long-term objectives of the establishment of Islamic rule in India by 2047.”
Officials in the NIA said that this has been the primary objective of all PFI modules operating in at least 15 Indian states now. In one of the recent chargesheets filed at a Rouse Avenue court last week, the NIA has submitted that PFI is trapping Muslim youth who had already pledged their allegiance to the out and its ideology and tactics through the administration of the oath of secrecy and loyalty (bayath).
“These highly radicalised men were being trained in the use of arms and weapons in various Arms Training Camps being conducted by PFI across the country with the intention of raising a well-trained PFI Army/militia,” the chargesheet said.
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The activities included the empowerment of Muslims and marginalised sections of society through campaigns and so-called social welfare schemes, in the disguise of which the organisation was promoting its anti-India and violent agenda.
Its cadres provided physical education training and weapons training, with those completing advanced training being inducted in its ‘hit squads’ or ‘service teams’. Radicalisation and recruitment of gullible Muslim youth was an integral part of the PFI strategy, an official said.
NIA’s investigations in the case have also exposed a trail of funding by PFI to its terror operatives and weapons trainers across the country, both in cash and through regular bank transfers, in the guise of payment of salaries. All these PFI trainers have been arrested in cases registered either by the NIA or by different state police forces.
NIA has frozen 37 bank accounts of the PFI organisation as well as 40 bank accounts belonging to 19 individuals associated with the PFI, virtually squeezing the organisation’s funding activities.
The crackdown on these bank accounts took place across India, including Guwahati (Assam), Sundipur (West Bengal), Imphal (Manipur), Kozhikode (Kerala), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), New Delhi, Jaipur (Rajasthan), Bangalore (Karnataka), Hyderabad (Telangana) and Kurnool (Andhra Pradesh).
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