Kasaragod: Fraternity Movement – the students' wing of Jamaat-e-Islami's political outfit Welfare Party of India – has become a refuge for the activists of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI) and its students' wing Campus Front, alleged SFI state secretary P M Arsho. "These activists who have joined the Fraternity Movement in large numbers have not changed their politics. They are implementing their agenda, unleashing violence wearing the mask of the Fraternity Movement," he said in Kasaragod on Friday, January 19.

"We have seen this earlier," he said, adding that activists of SIMI in Kerala moved to the National Development Front (NDF) and then to PFI. But when PFI was banned, no new organisation was formed, he said.

The influx from Campus Front and Popular Front into the Fraternity Movement was happening with the knowledge of the political leadership of Jamaat-e-Islami, Arsho said.

He said the Congress's students' wing Kerala Students Union was providing an air of protection to "these people". "Of late, a paradoxically political alliance is forming in Kerala campuses, KSU and Fraternity Movement. In other districts, the alliance has not manifested as it has in Ernakulam district," he said.

In several campuses, the two organisations work together almost like an alliance during elections, he said. "But it is a serious matter that they form an alliance to murder students on campus," he said.

To be sure, on Wednesday midnight, Maharaja's College's SFI unit secretary Abdul Nasar P was attacked allegedly by members of KSU and the Fraternity Movement. Kochi police have booked 19 persons on charges of attempt to murder, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt and voluntarily causing hurt with dangerous weapons and criminal intimidation.

KSU activist Ijilal, the eighth accused in the case, has been arrested.

KSU's Amal Tomy has also filed a complaint against SFI accusing it of assaulting its workers.

Arsho said KSU workers got swayed by the Congress state President K Sudhakaran's assurance and prominence given to Nikhil Paili, the accused in the Dheeraj Rajendran murder case.

Paili was a mandalam president of the Youth Congress. But after he was arrested for the murder of SFI activist and Idukki Engineering College student Dheeraj Rajendran, he was made the state committee member of Youth Congress's Kerala Outreach Cell, Arsho said.

Two other accused in the case were made KSU district president and KSU state General Secretary, he said. "It gave a message that those who kill SFI activists would be honoured with high posts and respect," he said.