The PFI was working in a modular fashion with each of its affiliate organizations working on specific agenda,, writes Rakesh Singh

The ban on the radical outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) and its affiliates by the Centre earlier this week under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has come in the wake of intelligence reports that the Islamist organization’s scale of radicalization has reached monumental proportions and its linkages with several global terror groups was threatening national security.

The banned outfit’s deep-seated strategic ambit is clear as it has begun regrouping within a week of the ban under the banner of Tipu Sultan Volunteer Force.

The most alarming element in the PFI’s tactics was the recruitment of a large number of mentally challenged children by its affiliate Rehab India Foundation, also banned along with the parent organization. The clandestine nature of such recruitment left the children open to abuse into drug trafficking, organ harvesting, gunrunning, and suicide bombing without them being aware of their role in such affairs.

While the government has banned the Rehab India Foundation, measures are yet to be taken to rescue these children. Their legal verification and tracing of their families are  the need of the hour to stem any possible threat posed by their misuse in the future.

The PFI was working in a modular fashion with each of its affiliate organizations working on specific agendas.

The PFI affiliate National Confederation of Human Rights Organisation was working in the guise of raising human rights issues of the Rohingyas and also organized protests in favour of the displaced Myanmar nationals illegally residing in India and also organized anti-state protests in the name of human rights violations of the Muslims to further its anti-government propaganda by projecting that the Muslims were being crushed in the country at the hands of the state. It was also working to create a pro-Rohingya and anti-UAPA narrative. It was being mentored by an American Human Rights group and also had a working relationship with urban Naxals and ultra-Left human rights groups.

The Empower India Foundation that brought the Vision 2047 document for Islamisation of India was engaged in intellectual narrative building and pushing Muslims at different levels of the government administrative machinery.

Likewise, the All India Imams Council, also a PFI affiliate, also banned, was allegedly working to convert the youths of Islamic factions like Sufism and Shia denominations into radical Salafism. It also engaged in conversion for which it issued a detailed set of guidelines.

PFI’s National Women’s Front was  reportedly tasked to spearhead the hijab movement. The outfit was not only radicalizing gullible Indian youths but also Islamic cohorts from a number of countries like Maldives and Seychelles among others.

The PFI had also reportedly  ran a “Boycott India” campaign in the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region when India was coping with the Covid pandemic and cryogenic oxygen was being imported from the Gulf countries. Through the Boycott India campaign, the outfit intended to disrupt the supply of oxygen so that more and more Indians could die due to the pandemic.

The outfit had grown so bold that  it  issued threats to a few serving and former Intelligence officers including Interlocutor for the Northeast RN Ravi last year.

The organization, with a membership base of over 15 lakh, was growing organically. The  Tamil Nadu Tauheed Jamat merged with it in 2021. Tauheed Jamat’s Sri Lankan faction was involved in the 2019 serial bombings in Colombo in the high security diplomatic zone killing over 200 people.

The PFI had developed significant connections with the Rohingyas. On the Uyghurs, the PFI facilitated the movement of leaders to Hyderabad but in a display of a double game, it did not endorse Uyghur demands in line with the Pakistani government line on the issue.

The PFI was also in the advanced state of setting up training camps abroad in conjunction with the Taliban and ISIS.

The PFI hierarchy is divided into two factions-the one owing allegiance to ISIS and the other to Al Qaeda. The current action against the PFI by the law enforcement agencies entails measures against the ISIS faction within the outfit.

The PFI leadership, tilted toward the Al Qaeda global terror group, was in contact with the Tahreek-e-Taliban. The group had also prepared a hit list of top political leaders.

The PFI was indulging in “disturbing” the country’s communal and secular fabric and “posing a grave threat” to national security by advancing its radical ideology and seeking to establish “political Islam” in India besides targeting Hindu activists.

According to agencies monitoring the activities of the PFI and its members, a secret ‘service team’ was formed, similar to the ‘hit squads’, whose main task was to provide security to senior PFI leaders and also keep track of Hindu leaders in their areas and plan action against them.

The PFI also covertly organised training exercises, and military-like drills, where participants are trained to use force and violence against certain religious groups, which are perceived as enemies of Islam.

Since its inception, the PFI has been against Hindu organisations and their leaders. The e group has a secret hit squad that engages in targeted killings of Hindu activists and those allegedly indulging in blasphemy.

The PFI is alleged to have been continuously involved in anti-government propaganda and spreading the narrative that Muslims were being persecuted in India.

The outfit was at the forefront in organising anti-CAA protests during December 2019-March 2020 and many cases were registered against them which included 51 in Uttar Pradesh alone where the PFI-led platform, Samvidhan Suraksha Andolan, was among those which coordinated the anti-CAA agitations.

Through active involvement in the protests, the PFI was able to project itself as a prominent Muslim organisation capable of safeguarding the interests of the community.

By projecting itself as the champion of Muslim causes, the PFI had been successful in attracting new members over the years. Its role in the Delhi riots was also investigated by the ED.

In recent years, the peaceful atmosphere of the country was threatened by PFI, which has a presence in 17 States.

The murder of Praveen Nettaru in Bellare town on July 26 was one of the cases that exposed the violent character of PFI. Nettaru, a member of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha and a local businessman, was hacked to death in typical ISIS style by bike-borne assailants and most of the accused in the case had an affiliation with the PFI.

An investigation by local police claimed a chilling tale of cold-blooded murder by PFI cadres and SDPI members in retaliation to the killing of 19-year-old Masood, a Muslim migrant labourer.

A list of RSS and Bajrang Dal members of the town was prepared and the PFI leaders handpicked some members to avenge Masood’s death. Nettaru was targeted as he had  commented on the halal issue, officials said.

Contrary to PFI’s claim of being a social organisation working for the uplift of Muslims, the ground actions of the outfit tell a totally different story with several of its cadres having a violent history.

Over 1,400 criminal cases had been registered against PFI cadres and its affiliates across the country including under the UAPA, the Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act and other sections of the IPC.

The interrogation of the accused in various cases showed that the PFI would identify Muslim youths, from poor or middle-class backgrounds, for physical training during which they were also inculcated with anti-Hindutva ideology.

These cadres were trained in handling knives, swords, and rods and how to attack specific body parts to inflict maximum damage.

On July 4, Telangana Police registered a case against 27 people after a training camp for 200 PFI cadres was found in Nizamabad. The PFI had been trying hard to make inroads into Telangana to increase its cadre base and was undertaking social programmes like distributing school books and food to the poor to gain traction among them

There have been a number of instances of international linkages of PFI with global terrorist groups where some PFI activists, particularly from Kerala, had joined ISIS and had participated in terror activities in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which was an outcome of the continuous radicalisation of its cadres.           

While investigating the foreign funding trail of PFI, the ED found that PFI had formed district executive committees in various gulf countries including the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

The India Fraternity Forum (IFF) and Indian Social Forum (ISF) were PFI’s overseas fronts and were to politically engage the expatriate Muslims to conform to their ideology and organise funds for activities of PFI in India.

Their executive committees were responsible for sending money to PFI in India without leaving any trail. Funds were generally collected in cash and remitted to India either through hawala channels or camouflaged as remittances made to relatives and friends of PFI’s members and sympathisers working abroad.

Further, PFI had linkages with the dreaded Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which was involved in several terror incidents in that country.

Also, 21 people having linkages with the PFI had joined the internationally banned ISIS terror group.

Some Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) training videos, depicting gruesome murders, were recovered from the PFI cadres accused in the professor TJ Joseph hand-chopping case in 2010.

PFI’s top leaders visited Turkey in 2018 and 2019 to attend programmes related to Palestine.

Its radical activities had attracted the attention of an international radical outfit namely, the Party of Islamic Renewal, which had in April sent an online letter to PFI on Twitter, praising its activities and urging it to organize a ‘Revolutionary Army’ for Jihad against the Indian government.

The PFI has also been targeting leaders of the Sufi Islamic Board, who were campaigning constantly for a ban on the PFI.

Since its inception in 2006, the PFI encouraged its cadres to undertake actions that mar peace and harmony among religious groups and disrupt the secular fabric of the country.

On December 9, 2006, three south Indian Muslim fundamentalist groups -- National Development Front/NDF, Kerala; Karnataka Forum for Dignity/KFD, Karnataka; and Manitha Neethi Pasarai/MNP, Tamil Nadu, rechristened ‘South India Council’ (a Bengaluru-based organisation floated by NDF in 2004) as ‘Popular Front of India’.

Several members of PFI, including its top leadership, had been active members of banned SIMI. They  included EM Abdul Rahiman (former Chairman), E Abubacker (Member, National Executive Council/NEC) and P Koya (Member, NEC).

SIMI was banned in 2001 under the UAPA for anti-national activities.

In their oath of allegiance, the PFI cadres swear to sacrifice their lives for the creation of Allah’s rule (Shariah). This oath was administered to the cadre only when he was judged to have been suitably radicalised for the group.

PFI recruits were radicalised by the display of selective video clippings on emotive issues like the Babri Masjid demolition, and communal riots in Gujarat and other parts of the country, aimed at instilling a sense of Muslim persecution and distrust against the state as well as other communities.

During interrogation by the ED (December 2020), Rauf Sharief (former general secretary, CFI), had said that PFI runs a secret relief wing, which actually plans and executes revenge attacks on selected RSS leaders.

On the funding part, the officials said that PFI receives dubious funding from within the country as well as from abroad.

PFI and its affiliates maintain a large number of bank accounts and receive money through its well-wishers/financers based in India and abroad. It also collects Zakat (donations) from its wealthy supporters.

The ED searched several office premises and residences of PFI leaders in 2020 and 2021 for suspected money laundering and arrested PFI leaders. The ED probe revealed that the PFI had created a very well-organized structure in Gulf countries for raising funds and the collected fund was sent to India through Hawala.

PFI was operating money laundering fronts overseas, which included the Munnar Villa vista project in Kerala and Darbar restaurant in Abu Dhabi.

In the Munnar Villa vista project, lakhs of unaccounted cash were infused and some benami shareholders were located in UAE, who later transferred the shares to PFI leaders.

The PFI was parking its illegally raised funds in this project so as to use them as and when required.

ED probe also revealed that Anshad Badruddin (PFI, arrested by UP ATS in Lucknow in February 2021 with arms and explosives) had received more than Rs 3 lakh from PFI (from 2018 to 2021) for criminal activities.

The PFI’s accountant during the investigation, in the aftermath of the Delhi riots, told his interrogators that PFI’s headquarters at Shaheen Bagh, Delhi kept crores of unaccounted money, which they use without any accountability.

Many cases of Hawala money transactions were being investigated by various law enforcement agencies against PFI.

A large jewellery company from Kerala is also suspected to be funding PFI.

(The writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer)