Kochi: National Intelligence Agency (NIA) said the top leaders of the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI) were aware of the murders in which its members were named as accused.
In a report submitted in the court, the national probe agency said the murders were committed as instructed by the leadership, aiming to spread fear in other communities.
Apparently, those who committed the acts were also trained for the same at PFI centres, inside and outside Kerala. The planning of the killings were conducted outside too. NIA has also informed the court that information about those in the hitlist were collected and studied. In the current scenario, NIA is expected to take up more murder cases.
The NIA court has increased by three days the remand period of those who were nabbed during last September's nation-wide raid. Earlier, the court was told that PFI has a secret wing and it had a network across India. It was also found that they made hitlist of people from other communities. The crucial evidence against the accused were collected from the phones and laptops gathered from the raids conducted in their houses and offices.
In near-simultaneous raids across the country, a multi-agency operation spearheaded by the NIA on September 22 led to the arrest of 106 activists of the PFI in 11 states for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country, officials had said.
The maximum number of arrests was made in Kerala (22), followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka (20 each), Tamil Nadu (10), Assam (9), Uttar Pradesh (8), Andhra Pradesh (5), Madhya Pradesh (4), Puducherry and Delhi (3 each) and Rajasthan (2).
The NIA had raised serious allegations against the banned PFI and its arrested leaders and claimed that the seized documents during the raids contain highly incriminating materials targeting prominent leaders of a particular community.
The agency also alleged that the radical Islamist outfit encouraged youth to join terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda.
