On 22nd September 2022, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Directorate of Enforcement (ED) and State police units conducted raids on the offices of Popular Front of India (PFI) in what they state has purported to be a “terror crackdown”, and has arrested several of its leaders and members. However, the complaint filed by an officer of the Crime Banch, on which basis an FIR has been registered in K.G. Halli Police station, Bengaluru reveals reference to “credible information” being received on the 21st September evening that PFI was involved in an organised conspiracy to radicalise Muslim youth. This is a sample of the staple allegations leading to criminal cases against the PFI which, except such bare allegations, have no reference to any actual incident or crime. Meanwhile, media reports quote NIA officials justifying the raids on PFI stating that it had links left-wing extremists and Dalit organisations that campaign on issues of police atrocities, fake encounters, alleged imprisonment of innocent people as under-trials by falsely implicating them in terror cases, and campaigning against the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA)!
Incidentally on the very same day, in the criminal court hearing the 2006 Nanded bomb blast case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sought for the Court to reject an application filed by ex-RSS pracharak, Yashwant Shinde to appear as a witness in a case. In the affidavit filed on 29th August 2022, Yashwant Shinde, who was a full-time worker of the RSS for decades, has detailed several meetings of the RSS and VHP in which it planned a series of bomb blasts across the country as also bomb making trainings.
The weaponization of the government’s investigative agencies and criminal law could not be clearer and All India Lawyers' Association for Justice (AILAJ) condemns such politically motivated abuse of government machinery, which is also a clampdown on voices speaking up to abuse of State power.
AILAJ further noted that that this is a conscious attempt to spread Islamophobia among the public and demonise Muslims as a community, which is already reeling under an all-out attack by the RSS/BJP using the entire state apparatus as also state-sponsored mob violence.
