Terror funding case: NIA summons Kashmir Bar chief

Srinagar: The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing alleged terror funding in Jammu and Kashmir, has summoned the Kashmir High Court Bar Association (KHCBA) president Mian Abdul Qayoom for questioning. He has been asked to present himself before the NIA at its headquarters in New Delhi.

The KHCBA and Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA), an amalgam of various trade organisations, have condemned the move, alleging that it was aimed at persecuting the Kashmiri leadership for its espousing the “cause” of the people. “First it was an attack on the economy when some of the leading businessmen were unduly harassed by the NIA through the so-called raids and now the other prominent faces of Kashmiri society are being harassed,” KEA chairman Muhammad Yasin Khan said in a statement here.

The NIA has been probing alleged funding of terror and subversive activities in Kashmir Valley after a national TV channel had in May this year, in a sting operation, showed three separatist leaders admitting on camera that they had received funding from Pakistan and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the chief or amir of Jamat-ul-Dawa.

Last week, it questioned Noor Muhammad Kalwal, a senior leader of pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), mainly on the sources of funding to run the organisation.

Earlier, the NIA sleuths conducted a series of raids on the houses and other properties of various separatist functionaries and businessman Zahoor Ahmed Watali in Kashmir Valley.

Mr Watali, whose business concerns are based apart from Kashmir and Delhi in Dubai and London, was later arrested by the NIA.

On July 24, the NIA arrested seven second-rung Kashmiri separatist leaders and activists on terror funding charges, including Altaf Ahmed Shah alias Fantosh, a son-in-law of separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani. The others arrested by it are Ayaz Akbar, Raja Merajuddin Kalwal and Peer Saifullah — all close aides of the octogenarian separatist leader Farooq Ahmed Dar, alias “Bita Karate” — a leader of a JKLF faction — and Naeem Ahmed Khan, a National Front leader. Also arrested by the NIA was Aftab Hilali Shah alias Shahid-ul-Islam who is the media advisor/ secretary to another prominent separatist leader and Kashmir’s Chief Muslim cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

All of them were sent into judicial custody by a court and are presently lodged in different jails in the national capital.

Yet another prominent separatist leader Shabir Ahmed Shah was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with an alleged money-laundering case and is currently in judicial custody and lodged in Tihar jail.

The initial raids were conducted in June at 23 places in Srinagar, Delhi and Haryana in connection with alleged hawala operations between Pakistan-based terror groups and Kashmiri separatists and the NIA had claimed seizing about Rs. 20 million cash, incriminating documents, letterheads of some militant outfits, laptops and mobile phones.

The NIA had earlier registered an FIR in which Hafeez Saeed has been named as an accused besides both factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference led by Geelani and the Mirwaiz, militant outfit Hizb-ul- Mujahideen and all-women rightwing Dukhtaran-e-Milat organization. The sources said that the NIA is also investigating the role of a former Director General of Punjab police in helping the businessman to acquire properties.