Hurriyat leader to be questioned for helping hawala dealer escape

Security agencies are probing the role of a senior Hurriyat leader in helping Nasir Safi Mir, alleged to be the 'financial brain' behind the Hurriyat Conference and other separatist leaders, to flee the country after paying for a forged passport from a southern state.

According to sources in central security agencies, Mir, against whom a non-bailable warrant was issued last year, managed to flee the country using Nepal route from where he had used the forged passport procured with the help of a senior separatist leader in Kashmir.

The Hurriyat leader is alleged to have used the help of some over ground Hizb workers and got the passport made from a southern state, the sources said, adding Mir, who was released on parole, reached Dubai after making a detour from Europe and Libya.

Mir was earlier arrested by Delhi Police in February 2006 while carrying Rs55 lakh from a Delhi-based jeweller along with some explosives, but had jumped parole which he had got after several requests made by his family to a court citing medical problems.

Now investigators claim that some clues have emerged indicating that a senior Hurriyat leader had helped Mir with monetary help and some assistance from Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist group to procure a passport from a southern state to ensure his quiet departure from the country.

The 39-year-old Dubai-based businessman, who owns carpet showroom and money exchange firms in Gulf, had been regularly reporting to the nearest police station till earlier October 2008, but after that he never turned up at the police station as well as at the court on the hearing date.

Mir, who was considered as a prize catch by the Delhi police following a well-executed operation by central security agencies, was suddenly missing which prompted the court to issue a non-bailable warrant against him.

Delhi police had shown its inability to trace Mir, whom they had claimed was very much hiding within the country.

There have been technical intercepts where Mir allegedly spoke to the separatist leadership after reaching Dubai.

A former Union cabinet minister had also taken up the case of the release of Mir with the government after Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq had put this as one of the pre-conditions for entering into a dialogue.

According to the police files, Mir was last spotted publicly with the Mirwaiz at a five star hotel in south Delhi in September 2008.

During the interrogation, Mir had allegedly told police that the money was meant for the Mirwaiz and also claimed to have spilled beans about huge investments made by the Hurriyat chairman in Dubai, they said.

Mir had alleged that the Mirwaiz had made certain investments in buying shopping spaces in Dubai besides investing in his (Mir's) money exchange business, the sources claimed.

Mir, whose father was picked up in 2001 for funding militant groups in Kashmir Valley, has claimed the money was part of the payment that "some officials in Pakistan had promised to the Mirwaiz for keeping his flock together in Srinagar".

He had also claimed he used to look after the Mirwaiz's foreign trips. The Mirwaiz was not available for comments.

A resident of Lal Bazar in outskirts of Srinagar city, Nasir quit his studies in 1983 to get into the carpet business which he continued till 1990 after which he shifted to the national capital and stayed in Lajpat Nagar area of South Delhi.

In late 1990's, he went to Dubai soon after his father was arrested on charges of his links with terrorists.

Nasir had also told his investigators that he first opened a firm named Kashmir Master Computers, after which he purportedly set up a company, Failala, but shut it down in 1998.

In 1999, he again opened a firm called Idekas. Thereafter, he reportedly started an information technology firm.

The police have found that in 2002, Nasir also opened two money exchange companies, Reems Exchange and Cash Express, which were allegedly being used as a stopover for money being pushed in from Pakistan for terrorist funding in Jammu and Kashmir.