The Kerala Police, probing the case of Islamist outfit Popular Front of India’s (PFI) training camp they had raided at Narath, Kannur on April 23, have learned that Islamists have been holding jehadi recruitment camps regularly in the northern Kerala district for the past several years.

The police have reportedly found that it was the terror recruitment camps held in Kannur that had produced most of the major accused in cases pertaining to the important terror strikes that had taken place in the country in the past 15 years. They have handed over a detailed report in this regard to the NIA which is expected to take over the probe in the PFI camp case soon.

According to sources, the investigators have discovered that the training camp held at Narath was indeed a part of this extremist operation. They have also learned that a special group constituted to be available for anything at any given time had been using special phones to contact all participants of the camp simultaneously.

The main mission of the terror camps held in Kannur so far was to instill jehadi ideas in the minds of the participants, the police said. Participants of such camps had been involved in several terror cases, including the April 17 blast outside the BJP office in Bangalore, sources said.

It is said that the four Keralite extremists killed in Kupwara, Kashmir in October, 2008 while trying to cross over to Pakistan for terror training were products of a jehadi recruitment camp held in Kannur. Also, recruits from such camps were involved in planting of bombs in various places and several murder and attempt-to-murder cases, the police sources say.

“In this sense, the raid on the PFI camp at Narath has been very crucial,” said a police source. Some of the 21 PFI activists arrested during the raid at the Narath camp could have had links with terror men like Sarfaraz Nawaz, who had arranged part of the funds for the 2008 Bangalore bombings, and several hardcore jehadis whom the NIA was looking for, he said.

Apart from the arrest of the 21 PFI men, the raid at the Narath training camp had yielded several weapons, bombs, bomb-making material, a human dummy used in target-practising, pamphlets and flags of the PFI and its political wing SDPI and an Iranian identification document, which caused suspicions of the camp’s foreign links.

The police have reportedly collected enough evidence on the connection of the organisers of the camp at Narath with terror modules in other States. It is said that certain people with terror links from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh had been in contact with the organisers of the PFI camp at Narath.

“There is every reason to believe that Kannur has been the capital of Kerala-based jehadi preparations though they had seemingly taken particular care not to spring serious strikes in the State. It is quite clear that many of the accused in several terror cases had at some point of time come into connection with persons in Kannur,” said a police official.