Indian police on Tuesday arrested more than 200 members of an Islamic movement across the country, which they accuse of plotting sectarian violence and subversive activities, according to police and media.
The Indian power has long claimed that the Popular Front of India (PFI), targeted by Tuesday’s operation, has close ties with the Islamic Student Movement of India, a jihadist group banned since 2001. The PFI has accused of extremist activities and links to the jihadist group Islamic State. The organization denies these accusations.
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More than 80 people were arrested in the southern state of Karnataka on Tuesday, police said. The suspects “incited communal violence” and “were trying to create trouble in societysaid a senior local police officer, Alok Kumar.
Police have confirmed 57 other arrests in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. And according to Indian media, nearly a hundred other people have been arrested elsewhere across the country. Last week, more than a hundred people linked to the PFI had already been arrested in India. The PFI condemned the police operation on Twitter, accusing the government of “witch huntaimed at silencing opponents.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party has been accused by human rights NGOs and foreign governments of discriminatory practices against India’s Muslim minority (200 million people) since coming to power in 2014.
Radical Hindu groups have long campaigned for the banning of PFI. It denies being an extremist organization, but several of its members have been convicted of violence since its inception fifteen years ago. Thirteen people linked to the PFI were jailed in 2015 for chopping off the hand of a university professor, whom they accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad five years earlier.
The PFI also galvanized protesters in 2019 against a controversial law that grants Indian citizenship to certain nationals of neighboring countries, but excludes Muslims. This year, the movement has also been accused of organizing protests against the ban on Islamic headscarves for Muslim female students in Karnataka state.
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