Government Mulling Ban On Radical Outfit Popular Front Of India For Terror Links

The Union Home Ministry is planning to ban Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI), a radical outfit that is believed to have links with terror activities.

According to a report in the Times of India, the outfit was involved in cases relate to chopping off a professor's hand in Idukki, Kerala; organising a training camp in Kannur from where swords and bombs were seized; murder of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh member R Rudresh in Bengaluru; and the Islamic State’s (IS) Al-Hindi Module case in which accused from Kerala and Tamil Nadu planned to hit targets in south India.

The PFI, an Islamic fundamentalist organisation, was formed as a successor to National Development Front in 2006. In April 2013, raids by Kerala Police on PFI centres across the state found lethal weapons, foreign currency, human shooting targets, bombs, bomb-making materials and other lethal weaponry.

According to National Investigation Agency (NIA), Manseed alias Omar Al Hindi, the chief of IS module, which was busted by the agency in October 2016, had worked for 12 years as part of the intelligence wing of the PFI.

According to Times of India, the Home Ministry is currently examining a report submitted by the NIA, which talks about PFI's policy of recruiting Muslim youth "who assiduously follow Islamic tenets" and subsequently brainwashing them with emotive clips of Babri Masjid demolition to instill a sense of "Muslim persecution".