The Kerala Police probing the case of the secret training camp of the Islamist outfit, Popular Front of India (PFI), at Narath in Kannur has received strong evidences for the links of some of the 21 PFI activists arrested in the raid at the camp on April 23 with Islamists accused in terror cases.
The police have found that about a dozen of those arrested from the camp, from where several weapons, bombs, etc were seized, had been communicating with Majeed Parampayi of Ernakulam, a former leader of the PDP of Abdul Nasser Madani, and Abdul Halim of Kozhikode, both accused in infamous terror cases.
They have learned that these PFI activists had been talking to Majeed and Halim over the phone and also through an intermediary hailing from Kannur. According to the investigators, this intermediary had advised the PFI activists to communicate with Majeed and Halim only through him to avoid use of direct phone calls to them.
Halim was the second accused in the case pertaining to the burning of a Tamil Nadu State bus at Kalamassery near Kochi in September, 2005, in which leT’s South India commander Thadiyantavide Nazeer, prime accused in the 2008 Bangalore blasts case, was the first accused. As per the chargesheet, Majeed had participated in the conspiracy behind the bus-burning.
Halim was also third accused in the case related to the March, 2006 twin blasts in Kozhikode city but the Special NIA Court in Kochi acquitted him in August, 2011 in the absence of conclusive evidence.
The investigators have reportedly found from the analysis of call records of over 50 phone numbers that the Kannur-based intermediary had made repeated phone calls to Majeed and Halim immediately after the police raid at the PFI camp at Narath and the arrest of the activists participating in it.
The police raid at the camp being held in an under-construction building belonging to a social service organisation linked to the PFI had yielded several weapons, two bombs, bomb-making materials, human dummy for target-practising, an Iranian identification paper and several pamphlets and other materials connected to the PFI and its political wing, the SDPI.
The leadership of the Popular Front, however, denied the charges made by the police saying that the camp was organised to impart training in yoga as part of a personality development programme. But questioning of the activists proved that the two chief trainers of the camp had no idea about yoga.
Officials from the Karnataka Police’s anti-terror squad had held inspections at the camp following indications about the involvement of two of its participants in the recent blast outside the BJP office in Bangalore. A team from the Andhra Pradesh Police also visited Kannur to examine whether the camp had any link with the recent twin blasts in Hyderabad.
Sources in the police said that they had got strong indications that funds had flowed from foreign countries into the account of one of those arrested from the camp. They have learned that this PFI activist was receiving lakhs of rupees into his account regularly from certain people abroad, including a native of Kannur who was a former worker of NDF, former avatar of PFI.
Meanwhile, the police on Friday continued questioning the activists arrested from the camp. They were presently questioning those in the second batch of seven accused whom the First Class Judicial Magistrate Court in Kannur had left in their custody for four days the other day. The police would later apply for the custody of the seven activists remaining to be quizzed.