New Delhi: In connection with NIA raids on locations connected to the Popular Front of India (PFI), Union Home Minister Amit Shah presided over a meeting with authorities on Thursday.
National Security Advisor (NSA), Ajit Doval, the Home Secretary, Ajay Kumar Bhalla, the Director General of the NIA, Dinkar Gupta, and the Director of the Intelligence Bureau of India, Tapan Deka, were among those present in the meeting with Amit Shah.
The agency has referred to the searches, which took place in ten states and involved the NIA, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), and state police forces, as the greatest probe it has conducted to date against suspicions of funding terrorism. Over 100 PFI leaders were reportedly detained in the nationwide raids that took place at numerous sites.
Others who are involved in "financing terrorism, arranging training camps, and radicalising people to join prohibited organisations" have their homes and places of business searched. The raids were reportedly carried out in a number of states, including Telangana, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh.
Assam Police earlier said that they had detained nine people in the state who were connected to PFI, four of whom were taken into custody in the Kamrup district's Nagarbera area.
In the Popular Front of India case, the NIA earlier this month also conducted 40 raids in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and apprehended four people.
In the case involving Abdul Khader of the Nizamabad district in Telangana and 26 other people, the agency then conducted searches at 38 locations in Telangana (23 in Nizamabad, four in Hyderabad, seven in Jagityal, two in Nirmal, one in each of Adilabad and Karimnagar districts), as well as two locations in Andhra Pradesh (one each in Kurnool and Nellore districts).
The National Development Front of Kerala, the Karnataka Forum for Dignity, and the Manitha Neethi Pasari of Tamil Nadu, three Muslim organisations that had been created after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition, were combined to form the PFI, which was introduced in Kerala in 2006. Many fringe organisations appeared in south India when the Babri mosque was destroyed, and PFI was formed after after merging some of them.
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