PFI back with its Talibanism in Kerala;Leg-chopping is PFI terror act, say Kerala cops.

The Kerala Police has confirmed that the leg-chopping incident at Paravur near Kochi on August 7 was an extremist act perpetrated by Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) even as a regional captain of the Campus Front of India, PFI’s students’ wing, was taken into custody for the murder of ABVP leader Vishal Kumar in Chengannur, Alappuzha.

In the remand report the police filed at a court while producing four accused PFI activists in the case pertaining to the Taliban-style attack on Nasser Vaniyakkad (42) of Paravur near Kochi, they said all the accused had extremist connections. The PFI operatives had hacked Nasser in the leg several times during the attack. The case has a total of 19 accused.

The police have also found that the PFI operatives had hatched a conspiracy to murder Nasser for the campaigns he had carried out against the outfit which led to its loss of power in the local mosque committee in the election held eight months ago. The PFI’s policy was to physically eliminate those who opposed it, the police said.

Nasser, an hotelier, was attacked by a gang of seven masked men on the early morning of August 7 while he was returning home after performing Namaz at a mosque in Paravur. Doctors attending on him at a specialty hospital in Kochi said that his condition was stable but it would take a long time for his right leg to return to normal condition.

The police said that PFI activists in Paravur had made explicit threats against Nasser saying that they had chopped off hands and legs in the past and that they were still capable of doing that. They said all the four arrested had been involved in other criminal cases and that all the accused had connections earlier with the NDF, former avatar of PFI, and banned Islamist outfit SIMI.

In a Taliban-model attack, activists of the PFI and its political wing SDPI had chopped off the right hand of college professor TJ Joseph in an early morning attack on July 4, 2010 for setting a test paper in which a question allegedly blasphemed Prophet Muhammad. Joseph’s copped-off hand was stitched back to the stump at the same hospital where Nasser is currently being treated.

A police official said that the assailants had tried to publicize a story connecting Nasser’s name with that of a local woman in order to divert attention from the actual cause of the attack and to conceal the fundamentalist intentions.