How AIUDF leaders were involved in launching PFI in Assam

An investigation conducted by India Today NE has found that several members of Assam’s political party All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), including some had who contested elections on the party ticket, were also active and founding members of the banned radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI). On September 28, the Union government declared the PFI an “unlawful association” for being involved in violent and terror activities prejudicial to the integrity, sovereignty, and security of India. It was also pursuing a secret agenda to radicalize Muslims, undermining the concept of democracy, and showing disrespect for constitutional authority and constitutional set up of India, said the government note announcing the ban on the PFI.

In a massive crackdown by Assam police over the last 10 days, 37 PFI leaders have been arrested in the state. Among them are AIUDF leader Farhad Ali, who had been picked up from Dispur area of Guwahati.  In 2019, Ali contested the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) election on an AIUDF ticket. He was also the personal assistant of Mankachar AIUDF MLA Mohammad Aminul Islam.

The India Today NE investigation also found that another AIUDF leader, who has been part of the PFI, is Abdul Bashar, the party’s former vice president of the Nagarbera unit in Kamprup district. He was one of the ticket seekers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Barpeta constituency. Bashar, a retired professor, was one of the four persons from Assam, who had attended a foundation course organised by the PFI in June 2011 at Green Valley, Manjeri, Malappuram in Kerala.

Interestingly, Bashar has remained out of police net till now. “We know Bashar was involved with the PFI. The PFI is banned now. We are not taking retrospective action. There are many such members. We are watching them and will take action if they are found to be involved in anything which is illegal and against the nation,” Assam’s Director General of Police (DGP) Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta told India Today NE.

On being asked about his personal assistant and party worker Farhad Ali’s involvement with the PFI, Mankachar MLA Aminul Islam, who also happens to be AIUDF general secretary, feigned ignorance about Farhad’s background. “I did not know that he was with the PFI. We learnt about it only after his arrest. We immediately suspended him from our political party.”

He also admitted that Bashar was a member of the AIUDF but claimed that the party had lost touch with the former vice president of Nagarbera unit after 2014 when he had been denied the ticket for Lok Sabha polls. “The AIUDF is a political organization and members of some other social organization come and join us. We never ask them if they are related to any other organisation or not. When these two members joined us, PFI was not a banned organization,” says Islam asserting that from now on the party will do a scrutiny to find out if any member is involved with the PFI as the outfit has been banned. The AIUDF leader also sought to take a dig on the ruling BJP: “If a murderer belongs to the BJP, it does not mean that the BJP is a party of murderers.”

After Professor Bashar and three others had attended the foundation course in Kerala in 2011, the next year, the presence of Rehab India Foundation (RIF)—a New Delhi-based NGO affiliated to the PFI and now banned by the government—was noticed in Bongaigaon. The volunteers of RIF were involved in relief work among the Muslim victims displaced because of the violence in the adjacent Bodo-dominated districts of Kokrajhar, Chirang and Baksa. Police sources say that the RIF began radicalisation in the garb of relief work.

The first meeting of the PFI in Assam was held in Sijubari area of Guwahati under the presidentship of Mohammad Hakikul Islam of Murshidabad, West Bengal, who was also the in-charge of the PFI for the north-eastern states. In March 2014, the Assam unit of the PFI was formally formed in a meeting held at the auditorium of Gauhati Medical College Hospital under the patronisation of Society for Total Empowerment of Minority (STEM), an NGO based in Assam’s Goalpara. The leaders of the PFI sang Vande Mataram during the launch. Through STEM, the PFI gradually built up its base in the Muslim-dominated areas of lower Assam.

Initially, to penetrate among people, it launched certain social outreach programmes such as training youths in BBA, law, pharmacology, and distribution of school kits. Soon, it began training on martial art for Muslim youths. In October 2020, two PFI activists from Kerala, Hanif Ali and Ibrahim Khalil, came to Nagarbera and conducted a two-day state level refresher camp at Tupamari private madrassa. “It is not without a reason that we have been going after these madrassas,” a senior Assam police official told India Today NE.

The strategy, according to Assam police, was to create communal tensions so that the PFI could play on to the fear and insecurities of the minorities, created by such communal conflicts. “It was found that PFI was trying to whip up sentiments of the religious minority groups by raising certain issues such as the hijab, which do not have any relevance in Assam. They wanted to foment trouble in areas such as Badarpur, Baksa, Barpeta and Goalpara, which have previous history of communal tensions,” Hiren Nath, ADGP Special Branch of Assam Police, told India Today NE.

According to an official source, the Campus Front of India (CFI), the student wing of the PFI, was highly proactive in recruiting from educational institutes. Even during the pandemic, it ran recruitment drives, physically and digitally, at top educational institutes such as Gauhati University, Cotton University and Barpeta Law College. Regular programmes such as Edu Next were being conducted for creating future leaders for the community.

The primary agenda of the PFI’s Assam unit was to collect funds, hold physical and digital meeting to radicalise Muslim youths and incite people against the government and its policies. “Initially, they offered education and healthcare support to attract people. Once people got hooked, they began radicalising, particularly the youth. That was their strategy,” says a top cop of Assam police. The banned outfit had strong influence in 10 districts of Assam—Barpeta, Dhubri, Baksa, Goalpara, South Salmara, Bongaigaon, Kamrup, Darrang and Udalguri and Sonitpur.

PFI’s Organisational structure in Assam

Zone	Number of Units
North bank of Brahmaputra	14
South bank of Brahmaputra	13
Barak valley	10

Area-wise PFI members in Assam

There are 21, 500 active members of PFI in Assam

Area/Dsitrict	Total members	Active members
Goalpara East district	800	500
Goalpara West district	700	300
Goalpara town	500	200
Bilasipara	500	300
Tilapara	500	200
Kamrup East	1,200	800
Kamrup West	1,000	800
Kamrup Middle	1,000	700
Barak Valley East	3,000	1,500
Barak Valley West	2,000	1,000
Baksa district	2,000	1,000
Barpeta district	2,000	1,000
Nagaon district	2,000	1,000
Dhubri district	1,000	500
Darang district	2,000	1,000
Chirang district	1,000	500
South Salmara district	1,000	500