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Two days before a communal riot in Rajasthan’s Karauli on April 9, the Popular Front of India (PFI) wrote to state’s chief minister Ashok Gehlot suspecting trouble during Ram Navami procession passing through a Muslim locality.
Rajasthan PFI president Mohammad Asif sought adequate police protection from Gehlot. And, it was for the first-time imprint of Kerala-based PFI became known in Rajasthan.
Kerala intelligence officers, who have been tracking PFI for a long time, termed the expansion of the group as “really intriguing and claimed that its “saviour tag” has attracted many Muslim youth in different parts of the country. They said role of the PFI was suspected in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2018, Delhi riots in 2020, unrest in Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh in 2021, the hijab row in Karnataka and Karauli violence in Rajasthan.
While the PFI rejects claims of its role in communal violence or protests, the organisation admits that it has units in 20 states and “effectively intervenes in rights issues of minority community and other weaker sections” across the country.
PFI expansion
Although the PFI is under scanner of intelligence agencies for some time, initially the organisation has units in almost all north Indian states. The PFI claims that it has a million trained members across the country besides a large number of sympathisers.
An example how PFI enters a region will be clear from the case of Indore bangle seller Tasleem Ali, who was arrested in 2021 after daughter of a local Hindu leader accused him of molestation. The Hindu leader was protesting at Ali selling bangles masquerading as a Hindu.
According to a senior Madhya Pradesh police officer, the outfit got a foothold in the state after the arrest of Ali, who was initially held for hiding his religious identity to sell bangles near a temple and later another case was a case was slapped on him for insulting modesty of a woman. There was a strong protest in last August alleging that he was framed and the PFI used the opportunity to sneak into the state, the officer said.
“After protest against arrest of bangle seller, who was beaten up for sexually harassing a minor, PFI tried to vitiate communal harmony by dubbing the incident a fight between Hindu-Muslim communities. We won’t allow anyone to create a rift between different communities. We are busy exploring ways to ban the outfit in MP,” said MP Home Minister Narottam Puri.
Indore police commissioner HN Mishra also said his force was keeping a strict vigil on the PFI to maintain law and order in the region. After recent communal incidents in Khargone, Mishra had again highlighted the role of PFI in creating communal tension and called for a ban on it.
In Uttar Pradesh, 133 workers of the outfit were arrested for their alleged involvement in violence related to anti-CAA protests in December 2019 and later, police accused the PFI of fuelling unrest in the case of rape and murder of a Dalit girl in Hathras in 2020. A senior official of the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of UP said four people, including online journalist Siddique Kappan, were arrested from Mathura while they were proceeding to Hathras to allegedly incite trouble. “These arrests show presence of the PFI in the state and its members have been working silently on their agenda. We are keeping a track on some known faces of the PFI,” said the ATS official who did not want to be named.
Kappan (43) and three others (Ateeq-ur-Rehman, Masood Ahamed and A Alam) were accused of fomenting trouble and booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and other provisions. Three months after their arrest UP police filed a 5,000-page charge-sheet against the four saying they are active workers of a fundamentalist outfit, PFI, and allegedly trying to fan trouble in the state. A member of Delhi Union of Journalists, Kappan’s friends and family deny the allegation.
“When all three were going to Hathras, Kappan was given a lift by them. We have no idea about his PFI connections. He was chained like an animal and denied treatment initially,” said his wife Raihanath, mother of three children. But UP police vouch it was not a simple “free lift”. In December 2020, the UP police told the Supreme Court that Kappan was not a journalist but a PFI activist posing as a journalist even though his friends claimed he was a full-time active journalist.
In Rajasthan, also the PFI has presence in about a dozen districts, said a police officer, adding that the PFI took out a “unity march” in Kota on Feb 17 when the hijab controversy was raging in Karnataka. Police said hijab was a non-issue in the state still there were attempts to incite trouble. In West Bengal, the PFI has branches in only two Muslim dominated districts of Murshidabad and Malda, said a senior intelligence branch (IB) official.
In Karnataka, the role of Campus Front of India (CFI), student wing of the PFI, was quite evident in the agitation of Muslim students for right to wear hijab in schools and colleges. CFI state president Athavulla Punjalkatte alleged that the ruling BJP only gave a communal spin to the peaceful agitation to serve its political goal.
PFI national secretary Nasruddin Elamaram denied all allegations and said the Sangh Parivar was scared after his outfit started taking up rights issues of the community. “Look we are not second-class citizens. We respect Indian Constitution and we have no idea to make India another Islamic state. But we want due share and respect in the country,” he said, adding that out of 371,848 undertrials in the country, Muslims are 72,790. That is more than 25%.
He said after all efforts to check PFI failed now the government was using central agencies to corner its activists. He alleged Enforcement Directorate arrested many leaders from Kerala on trumped up money-laundering charges. The ED had raided offices and residential premises of many PFI leaders in the state in December. “We have warned about Sangh Parivar’s hate campaign two decades ago. India is losing its secular tag fast and even Sangh Parivar decides what we have to eat,” he said.
History of PFI
In Kerala, many small Islamist outfits mushroomed after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 exploiting “hurt sentiments” of the Muslim community. Prominent among them was the Isalmic Seva Sangh founded on the lines of RSS by a cleric and fiery orator Abdul Nasser Madani. Later, the group was banned and Madani landed in jail in connection with Coimbatore blasts.
Most leaders of ISS switched over to Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). When SIMI was banned in 2001, these leaders formed the National Development Front (NDF). Intelligence agencies say traces of fundamentalist ideology was visible in early 1990s after many cinema halls were torched in Malappuram and in 1993 scholar Chekannur Moulavi was killed after he questioned growing orthodoxy in the community.
“In 1990s, traces of Arab culture started pervading the community and many fringe outfits used this to broaden their base. Both fronts, LDF and UDF, started encouraging these forces for vote bank politics,” said writer and Muslim reformer Prof MN Karassery.
In 1993, Communist leader EMS Namboodiripad was censured by his party (CPI-M) for equating Madani with Mahathma Gandhi. When Madani was released from Tamil Nadu jail in 2007 there was a grand reception for him in Thiruvananthapuram’s Shankumugam beach and main guest was then CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan. Madani was arrested again in 2010 in connection with Bangalore stadium blast case.
According to intelligence officers, in 2007 December a secret two-day camp of erstwhile leaders of SIMI and other Islamic outfits was held in Wagamon in Idukki and intelligence agencies say the 2008 serial blasts in Ahmedabad was planned there to take revenge for 2002 Gujarat riots. Later, it was found that some participants were imparted training in bomb making, use of fire arms, rope climbing and single wolf attacks. In 2018, a NIA court in Kochi convicted 18 participants and 17 were set free.
In 2006, NDF merged with Manitha Neethi Passarai of Tamil Nadu and Forum for Dignity, a Karnataka-based outfit, to form the Popular Front of India (PFI). Even now most of its frontline leaders are from Kerala, mostly former members of the SIMI. A retired professor from Kozhikode, P Koya, is considered surpemo of the organisation and he rarely interacts with press.
PFI’s growth was meteoric, admit intelligence agencies, saying it successfully exploited a growing vacuum in the community by donning the role of a saviour. And it successfully marketed a “crucifer and hounded image” outside, especially in rich middle-east, to mobilise funds. Earlier, its headquarters were in Kozhikkode in north Kerala but after broadening its base, the head office was shifted to Delhi.
The PFI describes itself as a neo-social movement committed to empower people belonging to the minority communities, Dalits and other weaker sections of the society. On the lines of the RSS, it has uniform and often conducts drills at public places.
In 2013, the Kerala government had banned its freedom parade which it conducts on Independence Day every year after the police found its cadres were carrying stars and emblems on the uniform. On Feb 17 every year, PFI conducts unity marches in all district headquarters in Kerala. It has cadre training centres in many districts in Kerala, intelligence officials say. Rehab India Foundation, which is under ED scanner, is one social organization with whom FPI is associated.
When Hadiya Jehan case came up in 2017, Hadiya alias Akhila’s father K Asokan had alleged that her husband Shefin Jehan was an active member of the PFI. Police later found that Akihla was converted in Sathya Sarani, a religious school being controlled by the PFI in Malappuram district. The PFI’s name was also cropped up in alleged “love jihad” cases (Muslim youth fell in love with girls from other communities and later convert them).
Since its inception the outfit was mired in many clashes and political murders in Kerala. It was allegedly involved in at least 30 political murders in the state, police records show. In 2015, 13 of its workers were awarded life-term for chopping the palm of a college professor TJ Joseph who prepared a question paper alleged to be blasphemous.
Two years ago, six PFI activists were held in connection with the murder of an ABVP leader in Kannur and nine were arrested for allegedly killing SFI leader Abhimanyu in Maharajas College in Ernakulam in 2018. In last six months three RSS workers were killed in the state allegedly by Social Democratic Party of India, its political wing. But PFI says it also lost many leaders to both, CPI(M) and RSS. Though its political wing SDPI contested in 40 assembly seats in 2021 Kerala assembly elections its vote share was less than 2 per cent.
PFI ban
There has been a growing demand to ban PFI for its alleged fundamentalist ideology and panning communal hatred. Governments of Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka had recommended the ban on PFI. The central government in April 2021 told the Supreme Court that it was in the process of banning the PFI.
“We are not scared of the ban. Instead of banning us, the government should address concerns raised by us. Many countries, including the US, raised serious rights violations in the country,” said Elamaram, adding that many Muslim youth were languishing in jails without trial.
A senior intelligence official, who investigated cases against PFI, said it was spreading it wings fast and sneaked into many bodies and started targeting educated youth from the community. “It is successfully marketing the victim card by citing so-called majoritarian rule and it won’t bode good for the country,” he said.
(With inputs from bureaus in Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhopal and Kolkata)
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