PFI’s expansion in Assam alarms police authorities

New Delhi: Undeterred by mounting government surveillance, the Popular Front of India (PFI), a banned Islamist organisation in Kerala and Jharkhand, has been active in several Muslim-dominated areas in Assam. Recently, the organisation had set up multiple National Register of Citizens (NRC) help desks in Muslim-dominated areas of Goalpara, Dhubri and Barpeta.

Though the PFI is banned in Kerala and Jharkhand for its anti-national activities and disrupting peace, communal harmony and secular structure, Assam has witnessed activities of the organisation during the recent updating of the NRC. 

However, Rajeev Bhattacharya, an Assam-based senior journalist who has been covering insurgency in the Northeast for over two decades, told The Sunday Guardian: “The PFI is not a banned organisation in Assam and till now, the organisation has not indulged in any anti-national activity in the state. However, on numerous occasions, the police did try to prevent the PFI from holding meetings, especially in Goalpara.” He also said that the PFI has gathered support among the lower income groups of Bengal-origin Muslims in certain pockets of western Assam and Barak Valley.

However, the presence of the organisation here has got the state police and security agencies worried as the PFI is suspected of being a radical Islamist outfit with links to the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). According to a police source, the PFI has been active in the state for the last three years. The source also said that besides western Assam, the organisation is also rapidly growing in Muslim-dominated areas of Barak Valley.