The Popular Front of India continues to pose serious challenge to the State police as the group is forever improvising on its activities to escape the police radar.
A couple of days ago, the State police gave an affidavit to the Kerala High Court about the direct links that PFI activists arrested from Kannur had with wanted criminal Dawood Ibrahim.
State Police Chief K.S. Balasubramanian said PFI was still under the police scanner. The State police had said in the affidavit that PFI had financial transactions with Indian Mujahideen and Dawood Ibrahim. The PFI activities became low-keyed following the intense police action against offenders in hand-chopping case.
PFI activists were arrested for chopping off the right palm of T.J. Joseph, professor of Malayalam at Newman College on July 4, 2010 for allegedly offending sentences in an internal examination paper.
“But unless the accused are convicted, these activities will continue,” said another topmost official in the State police. But the surveillance of the sleeper cells has now become all the more difficult as the activists stay away as much as possible from electronic communication devices.
The official said even during the investigation into the hand-chopping case, it was noticed that the PFI activists do not communicate much over emails or were very cautious in the use of mobile phones. This increased after the police tightened the net and arrested many activists in connection with the case.
The police filed the affidavit in response to petition by the accused for quashing theFIR against them in a case registered for organising arms training camp at Narath in Kannur. Police said the accused had close links with terror accused like Halim and Majeed Parambai, members of Thadiyentavida Nazeer’s group.
