The National Investigation Agency charged 68 Popular Front of India (PFI) leaders, cadres, and members in two separate cases in Kochi (Kerala) and Chennai on Friday.
Followed by these additions, the NIA’s total number of chargesheets filed against PFI cadres this month has risen to four. The first such chargesheet was filed on 13 March in Jaipur, and the second on 16 March in Hyderabad.
The chargesheets filed on Friday in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the two states where the PFI is most active, relate to separate criminal conspiracies hatched by the PFI to drive a wedge between people of different communities by radicalizing impressionable Muslim youth, providing them with weapons training, and raising funds to carry out acts of terror and violence with the ultimate goal of establishing Islamic rule in India by 2047.
The NIA opened the Kerala PFI case in September 2022 to investigate the criminal conspiracy hatched by the PFI and its leaders and cadres to drive a wedge between people of different communities by radicalizing impressionable Muslim youth, training them in weapon handling, and raising funds to carry out acts of terror and violence with the ultimate goal of establishing Islamic rule in India by 2047.
In addition to the criminal conspiracy mentioned above, the NIA has included in its Kerala chargesheet the connected case of the brutal killing of a Palakkad resident, Sreenivasan, who was hacked to death by armed PFI cadres.
According to an agency spokesperson, NIA investigations revealed that some of the accused in the PFI criminal conspiracy case (September 2022) were also involved in the Sreenivasan killing.