A day after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided its offices in Tamil Nadu, radical outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) on Friday alleged that the agency was targeting Muslims and trying to link “social” outfits like PFI with terrorism.
The PFI Tamil Nadu unit president M. Mohamed Ismail charged the NIA with targeting Muslims under pressure from the ruling BJP and “Sangh Parivar”.
The NIA on Thursday conducted searches at 20 locations in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, including four offices of PFI, in connection with the murder of a PMK worker in Kumbakonam in February last. A number of devices, including 16 mobile phones, 21 SIM cards, three laptops, nine hard discs, seven memory cards, 118 CDs/DVDs, one tab, seven diaries and two PFI banners were seized during the raids, the NIA had said in a statement.
The case pertains to the murder of 41-year-old Ramalingam, a resident of Thiruvidimarudur in Thanjavur district, on February 5, 2019. Talking to the reporters on Friday, Mr. Ismail claimed that PFI was into social services and the educational sector, yet the NIA raided its offices in the State, either to link it with Ramalingam’s killing or the Sri Lankan church blasts.
If NIA continued to “target” Muslims, PFI would resort to legal course of action and “massive” agitation, he added.
