The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has charged 19 people in its fifth chargesheet this month against the Popular Front of India (PFI), including 12 members of its National Executive Council (NEC), founding members, and top leaders.

PFI has also been accused as a group in a case involving a criminal plot to destabilize and split the nation.

The case’s NIA investigations have also revealed a trail of financing by PFI to its terrorist agents and weapons trainers across the nation, both in cash and through routine bank transfers disguised as pay.

These PFI trainers have all been detained in connection with incidents that have been reported to the NIA or various state police agencies.

Additionally, the NIA has effectively restricted the organization’s funding operations by freezing 40 bank accounts belonging to 19 people connected to the PFI organization in addition to 37 bank accounts owned by the PFI organization.

Investigation into the case, which has been ongoing since April 2022, has shown that PFI, working through the NEC, its members, and other PFI-affiliated individuals, hatched a criminal plot to divide the nation along communal lines.

The conspiracy’s ultimate goal, which has also come to light, was to install Shariah and Islamic Law alongside an Islamic Caliphate in lieu of India’s current system of secular and democratic government.

According to investigations, the PFI was putting together a highly motivated, trained, and secretive elite force within the larger organization to achieve its pernicious and violent long-term objectives of establishing Islamic rule in India by 2047.

By radicalizing and recruiting Muslim youth who had already sworn fealty to the PFI and its ideology and methods through the administration of an oath of secrecy and loyalty, the PFI had developed a well-planned strategy to engage in armed conflict with the Government of India.

In order to develop a well-trained PFI Army/militia, these highly radicalized men were receiving training in the use of arms and weapons at different arms training camps run by PFI throughout the nation.

To create an Islamic Caliphate, PFI had devised plans for its army or militia to launch a war to disintegrate and dismember the Indian Republic as established by the Indian Constitution.

19 members of PFI

The PFI members/cadres charge-sheeted today under various sections of IPC and UA(P)Act have been identified as OMA Salam, EM Abdul Rahiman, Anis Ahmed, Afsar Pasha, VP Nazaruddin, E Abubacker, Prof P Koya, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Abdul Wahid Sait, AS Ismail, Adv Mohd Yusuf, Mohammed Basheer, Shafeer K P, Jaseer K P, Shahid Nasir, Waseem Ahmed, Mohammed Shakif, Muhammed Farooq Ur Rahman and Yasar Arafat Yasir Hasan. They were apprehended in September 2022 after the NIA searched 39 locations across the country, including PFI offices.

After further investigation, it was discovered that the Malayalam text in the diary taken from Anshad, a PFI trainer and operative who has been active since 2010, contained coded instructions/guidelines on carrying out rioting, arson, strategy for attacks during riots, PFI working style, route to be followed by PFI’s local area leaders, reconnaissance of local topography, how and where to cause bomb blasts, etc.

The investigations also revealed that the PFI leadership was funding him and other such individuals to commit acts of terror and violence throughout the country.

Anshad was reportedly entrusted with expanding the PFI’s cadre and giving weapons training to PFI cadres. In the presence of physical education (PE) classes, he had been traveling to other states to recruit people for the PFI and to teach weapons skills.

Inquiries turned up plans for terrorist attacks by Anshad and Masud Ahmed, another PFI cadre.

It was discovered that Anshad had received around Rs 4 lakhs from different PFI bank accounts for this purpose. Masud Ahmed had also received money from the PFI before he was detained by the UP Police in October 2020.

Mohammed Abdul Ahad (who was charged in Hyderabad in December 2022 and is still missing), Mohammed Irfan (also charged in Hyderabad in December 2022), and Abdul Khader Puttur were among others who had similarly received money from PFI for terrorist activities in the nation (arrested in Bengaluru in September 2022).

A series of inquiries following the detention of Anshad and Masud eventually led to the identification of the PFI’s operating system.

Home Ministry outlawed PFI

The PFI, which the Ministry of Home Affairs outlawed in September 2022, raised money or gathered donations from both within and outside of India in order to carry out violent and terrorist actions throughout India, notably in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi.

In addition to radicalizing and recruiting Muslim youth to join outlawed groups like the ISIS, PFI office holders, leaders, cadres, and members were also active in this activity.

NIA investigations have also shown a consistent syllabus of Physical Education and Weapons training throughout multiple states, including the usage of the same code language, plainly demonstrating the central leadership’s conspiracy.

The central leadership’s plot to gather cadre, train them in the use of weapons and prepare them for an armed uprising in the future in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate in India by the year 2047 is amply demonstrated by the recovery of the PFI’s Vision Document, which was found in several NIA cases.

PFI’s mechanism of collecting details of leaders of organizations connected with a certain community and those who did not agree to their beliefs, in order to commit killings through its Service Teams or Hit Squads and their trained cadres, has also been disclosed by NIA investigations.

PFI Agenda

The PFI promoted its anti-India and violent agenda under the pretext of social welfare programmes and campaigns, which featured the empowerment of Muslims and other marginalized groups in society.

Those who completed advanced training were inducted into its Hit Squads which provided physical education and weapons instruction.

The PFI agenda included the radicalization and recruitment of naive Muslim youngsters.

Members of the PFI’s NEC were found to have coordinated the funding of arms training camps, the purchasing of weapons, and targeted executions.

PFI cadres have been implicated in a number of homicides and violent attacks around the nation since the group was founded in 2006, including those that targeted leaders of organizations who disagree with the PFI’s religious philosophies and ideologies.