Srinagar: Syedah Aasiyah Andrabi, the leader of rightwing all-women Dukhtaran-e-Millat (daughters of the faith), was shifted to Delhi along with her two associates by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), on Friday, following their arrest on the charges of funding terror and subversive activities in Jammu and Kashmir.
Fifty-six-year-old Andrabi and her two associates, Nahida Nasreen and Sofi Fahmeeda, were taken from Srinagar Central Jail to the Srinagar airport by NIA officers to shift them to Delhi. They are to be produced before the special NIA court at the Patiala House court complex in Delhi to seek their formal custody for further interrogation, police sources said.
A report from Delhi said that Andrabi and her aides were sent, on Friday, to a 10-day NIA remand by a court in the Patiala House complex.
In Srinagar, the ‘Joint Resistance Leadership,’ the alliance of key separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and Muhammad Yasin Malik, called for a complete shutdown in Kashmir on Saturday to protest the shifting of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat chief and her associates to Delhi by NIA.
The NIA has been probing alleged funding of terror and subversive activities in Kashmir Valley after a national TV channel had, in a sting operation in May last year, showed three separatist leaders admitting on camera that they had received funding from Pakistan and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the chief or amir of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah, which has had sanctions placed against it as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations.
The Kashmiri separatist organisations have condemned the arrest of Andrabi and her associates and accused the NIA of letting loose a reign of terror across J&K.
Independent MLA engineer Rashid, said that such moves “reflect the confusing mindset of New Delhi.”
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