Hunt for Nasir Safi Mir, financial brain behind funding Hurriyat leaders

In the wake of FBI arresting Ghulam Nabi Fai for receiving funds from Pakistan's ISI, Delhi Police has launched a manhunt for Nasir Safi Mir, who is accused of funding several Hurriyat leaders and is believed to have fled to the Gulf after jumping parole.

Apart from Mir, considered as the financial brain behind funding of separatist activities in Kashmir, investigators were also probing the role of some senior government officials who had helped him in securing a passport from a southern state which came in handy for him to flee from Nepal around October 2008, official sources said.

The name of Mir, a resident of North Kashmir who ostensibly used carpet trade and later a money exchange business in Dubai for sending hawala money to Hurriyat leaders and other separatists in Kashmir, cropped up when the government was examining the role of Fai and whether India could give some additional information to the US, the sources said.

Mir, against whom a non-bailable warrant was issued in 2009, managed to escape using the Nepal route from where he had used the forged passport procured with the help of a senior separatist leader in Kashmir and officials in security establishment, they said.

He was arrested by Delhi Police in February 2006 while carrying Rs 55 lakh from a Delhi-based jeweller along with some explosives.

He had jumped parole which he had got after several requests made by his family to a court citing medical problems.

He reached Dubai after making a detour through Europe and Libya. However, the sources now claim that he has left Dubai as well.

Mir, whose operations are similar to that of Fai, was arrested by the FBI in the US earlier this month for receiving money which could have helped the separatists in Kashmir.

The name of a former Union cabinet minister had also surfaced during a discreet probe as he had taken up the case of Mir release with the government after Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq had put this as one of the pre-conditions for entering into a dialogue.

The sources said, if need be, he too will be questioned.

The 41-year-old Dubai-based businessman, who owns a carpet showroom and money exchange firms in the Gulf, had been regularly reporting to the nearest police station till early October 2008, but after that he never turned up at the police station as well as in the court for the hearings.

With Mir, considered as a prized catch, suddenly going missing, the court issued a non-bailable warrant against him.

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

During interrogation, Mir had allegedly told the 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. 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, Mir 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 over his links with terrorists.

Mir had also told 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.

Police have found that in 2002, Mir 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.