Decision to ban radical group after central report: Kerala

NEW DELHI - The Kerala government will take a decision on banning radical Muslim group Popular Front of India (PFI) after getting a report from the National Investigation Agency (NIA), state Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said Thursday.

“As the NIA is investigating Kerala’s terror-related cases, it is expected that vital information about the PFI, including its link with other international extremist organisations, would also be revealed,” Balakrishnan told reporters here.

“These inputs and the information being collected by the state police would give us a final picture about the nature of the outfit and the government could take a decision,” he said.

On July 13, the Kerala High Court had directed the central and state governments to give their views on banning the PFI.

It is suspected that the activists of the PFI were behind the chopping off of the hand of a college professor for preparing an “inflammatory” question paper with references to Prophet Mohammed.

The home minister said the government was examining whether the leaders of the PFI have any link with the banned outfit Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Balakrishnan, who is in the capital to attend the central committee meeting of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), said the Kerala government would ask the central government to investigate the source of alleged foreign funding of the PFI.

Balakrishnan, who is also a politburo member of the CPI-M, said the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) should make it clear whether or not they support banning the PFI.