A special court in Kerala’s Kochi on Friday, September 30 sent 11 Popular Front of India (PFI) activists to judicial custody till October 20. They were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on September 22 as part of the nation wide crackdown against the organisation. The accused were produced before the court as their NIA custody period ended today, September 30. The court has asked the NIA to produce the accused on October 20.
Meanwhile, the NIA has sought seven-day custody of the third accused, Abdul Sathar. The court will consider the custody application on Monday, October 3.
The NIA has raised serious allegations against the banned PFI and its arrested leaders and claimed that the seized documents during the raids contain highly incriminating materials. In a remand report submitted before the NIA special court seeking custody of the 10 accused, the agency also alleged that PFI encouraged youth to join terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Islamic State of iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda.
In near-simultaneous raids across the country, a multi-agency operation spearheaded by the NIA on September 22 led to the arrest of 106 activists of the PFI in 11 states for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country, officials had said. The maximum number of arrests were made in Kerala (22) followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka (20 each), Tamil Nadu (10), Assam (9), Uttar Pradesh (8), Andhra Pradesh (5), Madhya Pradesh (4), Puducherry and Delhi (3 each) and Rajasthan (2). Protests broke out in several parts of Kerala against the arrest of the PFI leaders, which also turned violent. Instances of vandalism and stone-pelting were seen in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kozhikode, Wayanad, and Alappuzha, apart from Kannur and Kottayam.