The National Investigation Agency (NIA) told a special court in Kochi that the banned outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) had allegedly prepared a hit list of around 950 individuals, mostly from the Hindu community, to be targeted for elimination. This disclosure came during arguments against the bail plea of four PFI members arrested in the 2022 murder of RSS worker A Sreenivasan in Palakkad, Kerala.
The court rejected the bail applications on June 11, citing serious concerns raised by the NIA about the wider conspiracy behind the killing. Sreenivasan was murdered in April 2022, allegedly in retaliation for the killing of PFI member Subair a day earlier.
According to the court order, “The NIA has submitted that PFI maintained a list of around 950 people from other communities who were considered threats to the organisation and could be targeted.”
The NIA claimed that the outfit had a special unit called the “Reporters Wing”, described as a quasi-intelligence group, responsible for collecting personal details of prominent individuals from other communities. This information was allegedly passed on to higher authorities within the group and stored for future attacks.
The agency added that the “Service Wing”—another section within PFI—received these lists and carried out attacks when directed.
“PFI had trained its members to gather data at the district level and feed it to a centralised system under the supervision of senior leadership,” the agency said.
So far, out of the 73 accused in the Sreenivasan murder case, 58 have been arrested, the NIA said.
The court observed that the charges, if proven, indicated a dangerous pattern of targeted violence, and granting bail at this stage could hamper the investigation.
The NIA has repeatedly alleged that the PFI functioned through a well-organized structure, with different wings handling intelligence gathering, training, and execution of violent acts.
The court’s denial of bail strengthens the ongoing investigation into what the NIA calls a “larger conspiracy by the PFI to incite communal violence and execute targeted killings.”
