A day after Union Minister for Home Affairs, Amit Shah, said that foreign money had been pumped to fuel Delhi Anti-Hindu riots, the security agencies have red-flagged an Indonesian NGO with links to radical Islamist organisations such as Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), according to reports.
Indonesian NGO Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT) is a highly radicalised Muslim organisation, which provides money in the name of assistance to many Muslim countries. The organisation had sent Rs 25 lakhs to India and distributed the same in Delhi.
It has come to light that the said NGO raised funds using selective and malicious propaganda to allegedly help Muslims affected in the riots. The money was routed to India from Dubai through Hawala channels. The NGO was in touch with local Muslim organisations in Delhi to distribute the ₹25,00,000, to fuel the North East Delhi riots further.
The controversial radical Islamist organisation has been planning to send a team from Indonesia to North-East Delhi for targeted distribution of funds. Reportedly, the Indonesian NGO has also reached out to Rohingya Muslims at Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh following sectarian clashes near the Myanmar border in a bid to strengthen its Islamic Jihad. It had also helped another radical Islamist organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) in 2015 in its outreach to Rohingya camps in the Banda Aceh region of Indonesia.
ACT has denied allegations that it tried to fuel the riots, saying that they only helped the Muslim victims of the Delhi riots. In a press conference held on Friday, the organisation said that they have been conducting humanitarian programs in India for two years. Syuhelmaidi Syukur, a member of Board of Trustees of ACT, said that as a humanitarian NGO, they coordinate with official organizations to extend aid at home and abroad. The NGO said that it provided Muslim victims of the Delhi riots with food, housing, medicines etc.
Although ACT has claimed that it has offered only humanitarian assistance, it is running propaganda that the Delhi riots were specifically targeted against Muslims. Their social media accounts and website of the NHO have posted messages asking people to help “Muslim brothers in New Delhi, India, who are persecuted”.
In 2018, the National Investigations Agency (NIA) had busted a hawala module and arrested 3 operatives of Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, an organisation run by Hafiz Sayeed’s Lashkar-e-Taiba. According to reports, the NIA had conducted simultaneous raids at several locations in Delhi. The 3 arrested operatives are namely Mohammad Salman, Mohammad Salim and a Srinagar based hawala courier named Sajjad Abdul Wani. They are linked to the Dubai based organisation named Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation.
Recently, the Indian intelligence agencies had picked up cross-country electronic communication where people believed to be Pakistani operatives were reprimanding their sources for failing to organise anti-CAA protests with enough mobs on March 3-4 despite the funding at their disposal. In one such call, the handler attacked his sources for failing to organise an anti-CAA protest and stated that he had to explain to his higher-ups for the lack of crowds. The Pakistani cyber cells had been at the helm of misinformation campaigns, following the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir.
Homegrown Muslim fundamentalist organisations such as the Popular Front of India (PFI) have also been linked to both the Anti-CAA protests and the Delhi Anti-Hindu riots. On March 9, the Patiala House Court of Delhi has sent Mohammed Danish, a member of PFI, to four days in judicial custody. The 33-year-old and a resident of Trilokpuri area was apprehended by Delhi Police Special Cell for spreading false propaganda during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The Enforcement Directorate that had earlier booked suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor, Tahir Hussain, for the brutal murder of IB sleuth Ankit Sharma is now investigating his links with the PFI.
