BENGALURU: The Central government has banned the PFI under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967 for five years for alleged terrorist activities and links with other banned terrorist organisations like the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen-Bangladesh (JMB) and Islamic State of Iraq & Syria (ISIS). The other organisations banned under UAPA include Rehab India Foundation (RIF), Campus Front of India (CF), All India Imams Council (AIIC), National Confederation of Human Rights Organisation (NCHRO), National Women’s Front and Junior Front.
The gazette notification issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs dated September 28 mentioned the number of murder cases (of Right-wing members) perpetrated by the PFI was maximum (four each) from Kerala and Karnataka. “The state governments of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat have recommended banning the PFI,” stated the gazette notification.
In Karnataka, RSS cadre Rudresh was murdered in broad daylight in October 2016 on Kamaraj Road in Commercial Street police limits in Bengaluru when he was returning from ‘Patha Sanchalan’ -- an RSS function. The case was initially investigated by the city police, in which they arrested five accused -- Irfan Pasha (A-1), Waseem Ahmed alias Wasim (A-2), Mohammad Sadiq alias Mohammad Mazar alias Mazar (A-3), Mohammed Mujeeb Ulla alias Mujeeb alias Maula (A-4) and Asim Sheriff (A-5) under Sections 302 (murder) r/w 34 (common intention), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Sections 16 1(a), 18, 20 of the UAPA.
The case was handed over to NIA, which charge-sheeted the accused and stated that the five accused were members of the PFI and its affiliated political organisation - the SDPI. The chargesheet stated that the accused had targeted Rudresh “to strike terror among a section of people. The killing was a clear act of terrorism with the intention of instilling fear in the minds of people and was a step towards establishing the Islamic Caliphate in India by eliminating the kafirs”.
The second murder case from Karnataka, mentioned by MHA, is of RSS activist and autorickshaw driver Praveen Pujari in August 2016 in Kodagu district. The police had arrested then PFI district secretary TA Haris, PFI workers MH Tufail, Nayaz, Mohammed Mustafa, Mujeeb Rehman and Irfan Ahmed among others. The third murder case is of RSS activist Sharath Madiwala on July 7, 2017, in Mangaluru. The police arrested 17 accused including the main accused Mohammed Sharief, who was a PFI member. The fourth and the most recent murder case in Karnataka, in which PFI is allegedly involved, is that of Praveen Nettaru on July 26, 2022, in Dakshina Kannada district. The case was investigated by the state police. They had arrested 10 accused before handing over the case to NIA, which had nailed the PFI for planning the murder as “part of a larger conspiracy to strike terror amongst the members of a section of society”.