Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir police on Wednesday detained three second-rung leaders of Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference faction on the direction of the National Investigative Agency (NIA).
They are Altaf Ahmed Shah alias ‘Fantosh’ who also the son-in-law of the octogenarian separatist leader, Ayaz Akbar and Raja Merajuddin Kalwal, the police sources said.
The sources added that they are being flown to Delhi to be handed over to the NIA for interrogation.
The NIA had recently conducted raids at 23 places in Srinagar, Delhi and Haryana in connection with alleged hawala operations between Pakistan-based terror groups and Kashmiri separatists.
Those whose houses and offices were searched besides these three included Naeem Ahmed Khan, Farooq Ahmed Dar alias ‘Bita Karate’, Gazi Javed Baba, Zaffar Akbar Butt alias Saif-ul-Islam and Shahid-ul-Islam and business tycoon Zahoor Ahmed Watali.
Later some of these leaders and activists were called to Delhi by the NIA for further questioning. They have also been accused of funding the unrest in the Kashmir Valley.
The separatists have strongly denied receiving any foreign funding and alleged that the Indian government is making false claims in order to defame the Kashmiri ‘freedom struggle’.
The alliance of key separatist leaders Syed Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik in a joint statement issued in Srinagar termed “fresh wave” of arrests across the Valley as part of political vendetta and revenge against them. “Delhi is leaving no stone un-turned and uses military might and arm twisting methods to crush every voice being raised in the support of Kashmiri people’s sentiment and aspirations”, they alleged.
They accused the government and official agencies, particularly NIA, of “harassing and scaring” the Hurriyat Conference activists which is “highly deplorable”.
“Such totalitarian moves are being adopted by Delhi and its agencies with a view to pressurize the pro-freedom leadership in Kashmir and weaken the people's struggle but the leadership will not be cowed down by all these illegal and unethical methods or in any way deter people from their just struggle nor can these help towards the resolution of the Kashmir dispute,” the statement said.
On Monday, a resolution read out by the Mirwaiz while addressing an Eid congregation through phone after he was placed under house arrest and subsequently passed amid pro-aazadi slogans had termed the NIA raids on the houses of separatist leaders and activists and a few Kashmiri businessmen as “illegal”.
It alleged that New Delhi was “using new ploys to defame the freedom struggle of Kashmiris which is based on truth and priceless sacrifices”.
It threatened that if such raids do not stop “there will be serious repercussions and the entire responsibility will lie on the State government and Delhi itself.
