50+ cases against Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin in India

Hizbul Mujahideen chief Mohammad Yousuf Shah alias Syed Salahuddin, who has been declared a 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' by the US, is wanted in more than 50 terror cases including assassinations, abduction, attacks on security forces, and hawala funding within India, including Jammu and Kashmir.

In some cases, investigating agencies have filed charge sheets and in a few others, investigations are still on. However, little headway has been made in these cases given that Salahuddin has been absconding.

Director General of Police, SP Vaid said, "He is named in a number of FIRs." Based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) since 1993, the 71-year-old politician-turned-terrorist leader has been declared as a proclaimed offender in a Rs 80 crore terror funding case by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in 2013. There is also an Interpol Red Notice pending against Salahuddin who is also the head of the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group of over a dozen terrorist outfits based in PoK.

Other prominent cases in which he is wanted include the killing of Superintendent of Police Mohammad Amin Khan in August 2012. There were seven accused, including Salahuddin in the case. Salahuddin continues to evade the law in this case too.

In fact, Salahuddin's brush with law began in 1987, the year he contested the Assembly polls, widely believed to have been rigged. He contested elections from Amira Kadal, a constituency in Srinagar, on the ticket of Muslim United Front -- an amalgam of different political and religious organisations. Pitted against National Conference stalwart late Ghulam Mohidin Shah, Salahuddin lost the elections. In the same year, he was booked for seditious speech under the Terrorist and Disruptive Act, 1987 (the case was registered in 1987). However, the charge sheet for the same case was filed in 1997 when Salahuddin had alsready crossed into the PoK and had become the chief of Hizbul.

The police stated that Salahuddin was wanted in the 2002 attack on People's Democratic Party workers in which three cops and one terrorist were killed in Budgam district of central Kashmir. The case has been charge sheeted without any further progress.

Salahuddin was also wanted in the tourist bus attack in 2006 in Srinagar. According to police, grenades were hurled at a tourist bus in Lal Chowk on the instructions of Salahuddin, resulting in injuries to a few tourists. However, the status of the case remains "untraced".

Police have registered numerous cases against Salahuddin for threatening Panchs and Sarpanchs besides calling for the poll boycott to derail democracy in Jammu and Kashmir.

According to a NIA chargesheet, Salahuddin in 1999 chaired a meeting of Hizbul's Markazi Majlis-e-Shura, a top body of its decision making, in connivance with the agencies of Pakistan-founded Jammu Kashmir Affectees Relief Trust (JKART) - a frontal organisation of Hizbul. The objective was to systematically receive, collect and raise funds from different sources in Pakistan and other countries under the garb of relief for rehabilitation of affected persons in Jammu and Kashmir for furthering terrorist activities in India.

"Investigation has established that funds raised by JKART are used by Hizbul to foster terrorist activities by its cadres in Jammu and Kashmir," stated an NIA charge sheet in the Rs 80 crore terror funding case.

Former director general of police, K Rajendra Kumar, Jammu and Kashmir who investigated a number of cases against Salahuddin, told DNA that whenever any attack was claimed or carried out by Hizbul, a case was registered against Salahuddin as he was the head of the organisation.

"I remember, in 2001 to 2004 and 2006 there were many cases against him in different police stations. I think there are plenty of FIRs in which Salahuddin has been named," Kumar said.