Exclusive | Traffickers, 'Manufactured' Family Tree & Fake Aadhaar: PFI's New Modus Operandi Exposed

Close on the heels of Patna Police’s crackdown against the Popular Front of India (PFI), a new modus operandi for recruitment to the extremist organisation — which subverts the Aadhaar system of checks and balances — has emerged.

CNN-News18 has exclusively learnt that the modus operandi is being implemented in Bihar’s Seemanchal area, covering districts of Kishanganj, Madhubani, Darbhanda, Katihar, Purnia and Supal.

Agencies suspect that PFI has joined hands with traffickers to get Aadhaar documents for Rohingyas and Bangladeshis and then facilitate their translocation to states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka as cheap labour. “The modus operandi seems to be to include them in the family tree of an Indian Muslim. The head of the family, in lieu of money, often comes up with the plea that as a child, the suspect was sent to live with a relative and now that he has returned to help in the farm or other work, his Aadhaar card needs to be made,” an officer aware of the developments told CNN-News18 .

As per sources, the lid of this conspiracy was blown off when members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were arrested in Bhopal recently. “All of them had the same date of birth — January 1 — and same place of birth — Araria,” the source revealed. The fake Aadhaar cards recovered from the alleged JMB terrorists kicked off a multi-agency probe into how fake documents were procured.

Bihar Police officials suspect that stricter vigil on the Bengal-Assam border has led to the new modus operandi of entering India via the open India-Nepal border. Illegal colonies have come up on the No-Man’s Land in this region and uninhabited land parcels around its highways are also being used to provide temporary shelter to illegal immigrants, officials said.

Police estimates that 694 new ‘Madrasas’ and mosques have been constructed on the India-Nepal border since 2018 at a cost of close to Rs 500 crore. The source of this fund is suspected to be countries like Turkey, Qatar and UAE.

The busting of a PFI module in Bihar has kept agencies on their toes. Mohammad Jalaluddin, a retired Jharkhand Police officer, and Athar Parvez were arrested on July 13 from the Phulwari Sharif area of state capital Patna while Nuruddin Jangi was arrested three days later from Lucknow by Uttar Pradesh ATS, on the request of Bihar Police.

“They (Jalaluddin and Parvez) were teaching locals how to use swords and knives and also instigating them for communal violence. They have links with PFI,” the Patna police had said, adding that several objectionable documents pertaining to Islamic extremism have been seized from their possession.

Police said they recovered two pamphlets written in English — India 2047: Towards rule of Islamic India and Popular Front of India, February 20, 2021, after searches were conducted against Jallauddin and Parvez.

The organisation’s links are also being probed in several murders across the country, including that of pharmacist Umesh Kolhe in Maharashtra’s Amravati.

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