Kerala’s Congress party and the UDF Government it is heading in the State are trying to protect the Islamist outfit, Popular Front of India (PFI), the CPI(M) and BJP have charged even as the police lathi-charged the BJP workers who took out a protest march towards the secret training camp site of the PFI at Narath in Kannur on Tuesday.
CPI(M) Politburo member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, also Deputy Opposition leader in the Assembly, said on Tuesday that the probe in the case pertaining to the training camp at Narath was not being handed over to the NIA despite its obvious terror connections because of the collusion between the PFI and the Congress.
“This case deserves to be handed over to the NIA. Reports have come out about its extremist connections and links to the (recent) Bangalore blast. Still the Government is not willing to hand it over to the NIA because of the arrangement between the Muslim extremists and the Congress,” Kodiyeri said.
He said the very fact that a senior Congress leader was appearing for the accused activists of the SDPI, political wing of the PFI, in the NIA Court in the case related to the chopping off the right hand of college professor TJ Joseph was another example of the unholy connections between the Islamists and the Congress party.
“The lawyer appearing in the NIA Court in Kochi for the accused SDPI activists in the hand-chopping case is none other than the Kasaragod district Congress president. That speaks a lot about the connection. Can a district Congress chief appear in a case like this without the permission of the State Congress presidentIJ” Kodiyeri asked.
Inaugurating a protest march taken out by the BJP to the PFI training camp at Narath, Kannur from where several weapons, bombs and incriminating documents were seized and 21 Islamists were arrested in an April 23 police raid, State BJP general secretary K Surendran alleged that the Congress was making every attempt to sabotage the case.
He said the Congress-led Government in Kerala was forcing Rahul R Nair, Superintendent of Police, Kannur to derail the probe into the terror connections of the PFI training camp under the influence of K Sudhakaran, Congress MP from Kannur.
In the meantime, two BJP workers, Anoop and Vijilesh, suffered injuries in the lathi-charge the police carried out on the party workers who took out a march to the training camp site defying the prohibitory orders clamped on the Narath area since Monday night. The police also arrested four BJP leaders including Surendran for violating the prohibitory orders.
Hundreds of police personnel were deployed in the Narath area to block the BJP march, especially in the context of the PFI threat to block the march. However, the PFI withdrew from its declared move to take out a march in the last moment saying it was the police’s responsibility to ensure peace and order.
The police blocked the BJP march almost 200 metres away from the camp site, a building owned by Thanal Charitable Trust, said to be a PFI front. Trouble started with the police reacting violently towards the activists when they tried to march beyond the barricade put up by the police. As the police forcefully blocked the march, the activists held a sit-in on the road.
In a raid on April 23, the Kerala Police had seized several weapons, two bombs, bomb-making materials, a human dummy used for target-practising, an Iranian identification document and several papers, pamphlets an flags relating to the Popular Front and the SDPI. The police also arrested 21 PFI activists who were at the camp at the time of the raid.