On Monday, the Ministry of Home Affairs clarified that certain media reports about a meeting to decide on banning the notorious radical Islamic organisation Popular Front of India (PFI) were inaccurate.
A few days ago, there were reports in the media that the centre was considering banning the radical Islamic organisation Popular Front of India (PFI), an organisation accused of instigating riots and violence in many states in the country. The reports suggest the Modi government will decide on the ban next week.
The reports had suggested that the Ministry of Home Affairs has adequate proof paving the way for this organisation to be blacklisted. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the Supreme Court in April 2021 that the Centre was in the process of banning PFI.
The PFI is already outlawed in numerous states, but the government intends to ban it through a centralised notification. This group, which was founded in 2006, has come under scrutiny for its suspected involvement in a variety of anti-social and anti-national actions.
However, according to the latest clarification by the Home Ministry, no such meeting has taken place to decide on a ban on PFI.
Ministry of Home Affairs says that media reports about a meeting on banning of PFI is inaccurate. No such meeting has taken place today.
— ANI (@ANI) April 18, 2022
Popular Front of India (PFI) is an outgrowth of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which was proscribed in 2001 following the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, according to the NIA dossier. The NIA used the fact that the same people had served on the boards of both organisations to buttress its argument. Meanwhile, according to the ED’s investigation, this group was crucial in generating funding for anti-CAA protests.
In 2020, six members of PFI’s political branch, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), were arrested in connection with the attempted murder of RSS activist Varun Bhoopalam. They also planned to assassinate Chakravarthy Sulibele, a renowned right-wing ideologue, and Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya. There is a mountain of evidence pointing to PFI’s direct role in the anti-Hindu Delhi riots in 2020.
Also, on April 14, when violence erupted during Ram Navami processions in Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, MP BJP chairman VD Sharma claimed that the PFI was responsible for rioting and stone-pelting in Khargone, prompting a curfew.
After the National Investigation Agency (NIA) submitted to the Home Ministry a thorough dossier listing the Islamic group’s suspected ties with terror-related instances that the agency had examined, calls for a ban on the Popular Front of India gained new traction in 2017. The NIA had placed the PFI, and its political branch, the SDPI, as suspects in the Bangalore blast case, the Kerala professor palm-chopping case, and Kerala love jihad case, among other cases, in its dossier.
