Move to sabotage Kannur jihadi arms training camp investigation

Investigators probing the case of   Popular Front of India (PFI) run terror training camp at Narath near Kannur, have reportedly got evidence to suggest that the camp and training were part of a larger plan to unleash communal disturbances in the state in a well planned manner.

“The presence of known criminals in the camp probably as trainers, participation of trainees from different parts and seized training materials suggest at a larger objective,” said a police official, part of the investigating team.

Efforts on to sabotage and dilute the case.

Meanwhile, the political interference in the case has come to the fore with the sudden transfer of Surendran Kalyadan, the Sub-Inspector of the local police station. Surendran has been transferred to Kannur city police station. Police sources, however denied any link between the two developments.

Reports also suggested that some leaders from the ruling front exerted pressure on the police to take a lenient view in the case and register case under sections for minor offences. According to sources, some UDF leaders, including a Minister called top police officers more than once with the demand to dilute the charges. Some political leaders who belong to the ruling political party and who are hand in glove with extremist elements are suspected to be behind this move. They fear that if the investigation goes deeper, their names and links also would be exposed.

 However State DGP Balasubramanyam and SP Shankar Reddy remained firm that the case will be transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) if terror links are established prima face.

Police officers  and officers from Central Intelligence agencies are interrogating the arrested youth. Sources said interrogation of the arrested activists had led to some revelations helpful to establish their links with extremist and anti-national outfits.

The building raided by the police is ostensibly the office of a charitable trust associated with the PFI. The trust was being used as a cover for running the armed training centre, police said. Meanwhile, the PFI district leadership and state committee have made bizarre claims that the weapons were planted there and the youth were merely attending a Yoga training camp as part of a campaign ‘healthy people and healthy nation’. However, they were evasive when asked why youths from different parts of the district had gathered at an isolated building under construction at Narath rather than a hall at Edakkad or Muzhappilangad.

Most of the youths among the 21 persons arrested were from Edakkad and Muzhappilangad, nearly 25 km from Narath. The police officers who questioned the arrested said that the youths did not betray even basic knowledge of yoga.

Whether the outfit had any connection with cases of seizure of a large number of country-made bombs and weapons from Narath will also be looked into, the officers said. The police on December 6, 2005, had unearthed a stockpile of country-made bombs and weapons from an uninhabited house.

The weapons seized included 20 powerful pipe bombs, 12 country-made explosive materials and two axes. On November 16 last year, six country-made bombs were seized from another uninhabited house at Onaparamba near Narath.

As reported earlier, three country-made bombs and a sword were seized in a raid at an under construction building and 21 alleged activists of radical outfit Popular Front of India taken into custody at Narath area, police said on Tuesday.

Some PFI leaflets, an identity card and a human dummy were also recovered from the building, they said adding two persons guarding the centre fled on seeing the police. (with inputs)

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