According to the Enforcement Directorate, the Popular Front of India (PFI) planned to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Patna and was raising terror modules, assembling lethal weapons and explosives, and getting ready to launch simultaneous attacks on important targets and people in Uttar Pradesh, according to the Times of India. The PFI allegedly organised a training camp to conduct an assault during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Patna on July 12, according to the ED’s remand notice against PFI member Shafeeque Payeth, who was detained in Kerala on Thursday.
Notably, PM Modi came dangerously close to being killed in Patna in October 2013 when jehadi terrorists from the Indian Mujahideen, which, like the PFI, includes members of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement in India among its ranks, attacked a rally he attended right after. The ED found information around Rs 120 crore that the group had amassed over the years, largely in cash and planned to be used for riots and terrorist actions across the nation.
Following the national raids on the group on Thursday, during which numerous authorities, including the National Investigation Agency, detained more than 100 people connected to the group, the agency has detained four PFI members. Perwez Ahmed, Md. Ilias, and Abdul Muqeet were the other three board members of the company that the ED seized in Delhi. All of them have been questioned by the agency many times since 2018, when a money laundering probe against PFI began.
The Enforcement Directorate has charged Payeth, who formerly resided in Qatar, with using his NRI account in India unlawfully to send money to PFI in order to foment trouble in the nation. When investments in real estate companies and their diversion to PFI were made public, the agency reportedly raided Payeth’s offices last year. ‘ Over the years, more than Rs 120 crore has been put in the accounts of PFI and linked businesses, and a very considerable portion of the same has been deposited in cash from unknown and dubious sources within the nation as well as overseas,’ according to the agency.
According to the agency, ‘these funds were layered and transferred for eventual use in their continuous unlawful activities over time which includes but are not limited to inciting violence and fomenting trouble leading to Delhi riots of February 2020, visit of PFI members to Hathras with an intent to disturb communal harmony, inciting riots and spreading terror, planned to form a terror gang, collection of deadly weapon and explosives to simultaneously launch attacks on important and sensitive places and individuals in UP with an intent to undermine the unity, integrity and sovereignty of the nation’.
The agency charged PFI with engaging in criminal conspiracy as well as actions that might ‘threaten the unity, integrity, and sovereignty of the nation’. A number of bank accounts belonging to PFI and its members were examined throughout the investigation, and statements from the accused were recorded.
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