The National Investigation Agency (NIA) may soon start probing the case relating to the terror training camp allegedly organised by Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) at Narath in Kerala’s Kannur district, from where the Kerala Police had arrested 21 activists and seized several suspicious articles including bombs and other weapons.
The Kerala Government decided to hand over the probe to the NIA after the police reached the assumption that the 21 PFI activists arrested from the camp on April 23 had connections with several global terror outfits and the Indian Mujahiddin, according to Deputy Superintendent of Police (Kannur) P Sukumaran. The probe would be held by the Hyderabad unit of the NIA, which would take into its custody in the next couple of days all the evidences collected by the police in connection with the camp. Senior officials of the agency had earlier visited Narath and held preliminary examinations at the camp, which was being run at a building of a charitable organisation linked to the PFI.
According to police, all the 21 accused had been using SIM cards taken on forged documents to call people abroad. Apart from this, some of the accused had links with terror operations held inside Kerala, like the burning of a bus at Kalamassery near Kochi in September, 2005 and the twin blasts at Kozhikode in March, 2006. In a raid at the training camp on April 23, the police had seized several weapons, bombs, bomb-making materials, a human dummy meant for target-practising, an Iranian identity card, several pamphlets and documents with anti-national content, flags and other articles of the PFI and its political wing, the SDPI, etc.
The Kerala Government had earlier called for an NIA probe considering the extremist and anti-national character of the camp, the nature of the materials confiscated from Narath and the shocking indications gathered by the police with respect to it.
