Centre using NIA to malign us: PFI leader

Bengaluru: The Popular Front of India (PFI) on Wednesday accused the central government of running a “systematic campaign” to smear the image of the organisation and using the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to link “every other case to PFI and frame its members in fabricated cases and falsely book them under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act  (UAPA)”.

Terming PFI a social organisation working for the empowerment and upliftment of Muslims, raising issues faced by the Dalits and Christians, PFI state president Mohammed Saqib said that the Centre is making several attempts to defame PFI through false propaganda and stifle its activities through “anti-democratic and anti-constitutional measures”.

“The NIA is systematically picking up local criminal issues and somehow trying to connect them to the PFI and its members, right from the case of an assault on a Kerala professor over a blasphemous post to alleged ‘dangerous training camps organised by PFI’, non-existent love jihad case involving Dr Hadiya (Akhila) and PFI’s role in her conversion to the killing of RSS man Rudresh. NIA’s claims and accusations against PFI and its attempt to link PFI to all these cases have fallen flat in the High Courts,” Mr Saqib pointed out.

He said that though no role of PFI was established in any criminal, terror or anti-national activities, the central government’s has continuously been haunting PFI.

The PFI is planning to hold country-wide mega-conferences with the slogan, “We Also Have Something to Say”, to resist the central government’s move to suppress the organisation. PFI’s state chapter will organise the conference in Bengaluru on October 15.