The National Investigation Agency (NIA) carried out searches on Sunday at seven more locations belonging to secessionist and separatist elements, traders and hawala operators suspected of funding terror in Jammu and Kashmir. The raids were carried out across two states — Jammu and Kashmir, and Haryana.
"Searches were conducted in Srinagar, Jammu and Gurgaon," said a senior NIA officer.
Several bank accounts were detected during the searches. "Pakistani currency notes and currencies belonging to the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been found and seized, apart from a lot of other incriminating material like correspondence with jailed troublemakers, suspicious transactions, and mobile phones," the officer said.
He further pointed out that prominent among those raided by the NIA are Tariq Ahmed Khan, ex-president of the LoC Traders Association, and Farooq Baggu and Kamal of Jammu. The people concerned are being questioned about the same," the NIA officer said.
In Kashmir, the house of a spokesman of Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference was among the seven places raided by the NIA in the second round of crackdowns to unravel the trail of money used to fuel the unrest and terror in Kashmir.
The agency raided a prominent dry fruit dealer in Jammu's Gandhi Nagar area. NIA sleuths also conducted raids on the residence of hardline Hurriyat Conference spokesman Ayaz Akbar.
Akbar, a media face for Hurriyat and Geelani, was held under the Public Safety Act (PSA) during last year's unrest. A cross-LoC trader and prominent city businessman were also raided by NIA sleuths on Sunday.
The searches were carried out in continuation of Saturday's raids at 26 locations in Kashmir, Delhi and Haryana.
Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), an amalgam of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani, moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik, who spearheaded last year's unrest, has called for an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the latest situation and its implications on Kashmiris, including the business community in the state.
"A policy of witch hunt has been launched by the Indian state against the resistance leadership and the business community of the Valley to defame and weaken the people's political struggle and simultaneously cripple the economy of Kashmir. Such dirty ploys will demoralise neither the people nor their leadership," a JRL leader said.
"Indian authorities, its agencies and particularly the NIA are unnecessarily harassing the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat leadership and its activists. They have been given this task just to drag members of the leadership into fabricated cases. The unfortunate aspect of this is that the NIA sleuths harass people and even ransack properties during raids," said Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
On Saturday, the agency swooped down on the separatists, their associates and some businessmen suspected to be involved in routing funds, at 26 locations across Kashmir, Haryana and Delhi, after it converted a preliminary enquiry into terror funding as an FIR.
...& ANALYSIS
- After decades of going unchecked, these raids have warned all other concerned.
- The process by which the ones raided received money ought to be probed as well.
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