`NIA go back` slogans raised by SPDI workers in Andhra as agency conducts `largest-ever investigation`

New Delhi: SDPI workers on Thursday (September 22, 2022) raised slogans of "NIA Go Back" to protest against the NIA raid at the residence of an SDPI leader in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh. The Popular Front of India (PFI) office in Hyderabad was seized and sealed today morning by National Investigation Agency (NIA). 

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and local police today launched multiple raids across 11 states - including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam - to crackdown on suspected terror-funding activities.

The agency had then conducted searches at 38 locations in Telangana (23 in Nizamabad, four in Hyderabad, seven in Jagityal, two in Nirmal, one each in Adilabad and Karimnagar districts).

The NIA and ED raids began around 3.30 am today. The central agencies have, so far, arrested more than 100 leaders of the Popular Front of India. The Popular Front of India (PFI) called the raids an example of the government 'using agencies to silence dissenting voices'.

"The nationwide raids in the residences of the leaders are the affirmative sign of the efforts to stifle the dissenting voices. In the past few years in which the mainstream political parties have become mute about the fascist atrocities in the country, it has been the Popular Front of India and the Social Democratic Party of India that have taken up the role of the opposition in challenging the undemocratic, divisive politics of the Hindutva fascists that leads the country into peril," said SDPI in a press release. 

The PFI and SDPI workers staged a protest in Karnataka’s Mangaluru against the raids, following which they were detained by the state police.

NIA raids in Tamil Nadu

In a major crackdown on the Popular Front of India (PFI), the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conducted raids at eight places in Tamil Nadu in the early hours on Thursday. NIA conducted searches at in the Madurai city area including Villapuram, Gomatipuram, and Kulamangalam.

More than 50 members of the PFI are protesting against the raids outside the party office in the Dindigul district.

These searches are being conducted at the residential and official premises of persons involved in “funding terrorism, organising training camps and radicalising people to join proscribed organisations”.

“In a major action across 10 states, NIA, ED and state police have arrested more than 100 cadres of PFI,” sources told ANI.