Court Sends 11 PFI Leaders From Kerala To Judicial Custody Till Oct 20

A special court in Ernakulam has sent 11 Popular Front of India (PFI) activists, who were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently, to judicial custody till October 20.

The accused were produced before the Court as their NIA custody period ended today.

The Court has asked the NIA to produce the accused on October 20.

Meanwhile, the NIA has sought seven day custody of the third accused, Abdul Sathar, who was recently arrested. The Court will consider the custody application on Monday.

The NIA has raised serious allegations against the banned PFI and its arrested leaders and claimed that the seized documents during the raids contain highly incriminating materials targeting prominent leaders of a particular community.

In a remand report submitted before the NIA special court seeking custody of 10 accused in a case registered here, the agency also alleged that the radical Islamist outfit encouraged youth to join terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Islamic State of iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda.

In near simultaneous raids across the country, a multi-agency operation spearheaded by the NIA on September 22 led to the arrest of 106 activists of the PFI in 11 states for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country, officials had said.

The maximum number of arrests were made in Kerala (22) followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka (20 each), Tamil Nadu (10), Assam (9), Uttar Pradesh (8), Andhra Pradesh (5), Madhya Pradesh (4), Puducherry and Delhi (3 each) and Rajasthan (2).

With PTI inputs