Kerala police denies reports that its personnel have PFI links

Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala police on Tuesday denied as “baseless” media reports that NIA has told the State Police Chief (SPC) that several hundred personnel of the force have links to the banned outfit Popular Front of India (PFI).

Some news articles had claimed that the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which had recently raided PFI offices across the country and arrested the organisation’s leaders, has given a report to the SPC indicating therein that 873 personnel of Kerala Police have links with the outfit.

Such news reports are baseless, a release issued by the State Police Media Center said

The central government banned PFI on September 27 and the next day, a leader of its Kerala unit made a statement that the outfit has been disbanded.

Hours after making the statement, Abdul Sathar, who had called a hartal when he was state general secretary of the outfit and allegedly absconded, was arrested from Kollam on Wednesday and handed over to the NIA.

Multi-agency teams, spearheaded by the NIA, had last week carried out raids at 93 locations in 15 states across the country and arrested over 100 PFI leaders for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country.

Kerala, where the PFI has some strong pockets, had accounted for the maximum number of 22 arrests in the NIA’s nation-wide action against the outfit.