Following a comprehensive enquiry into the inland and overseas funding to Kashmiri separatists and militants, National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday carried out fresh raids at the residence of two officials of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, who are closely related to a prominent businessman, in Tangmarg area of Baramulla district in north-west of Srinagar.
Ever since its first raids in Srinagar on 3 and 4 June, the high profile businessman, who is known to have his activities spread between Kashmir, Delhi, Dubai and London, has been under interrogation by the NIA sleuths. However, he has not been formally taken into custody.
Politicians, officials and journalists attribute his freedom to his deep-rooted connections to a former separatist leader who now happens to be a BJP-supported minister in Mehbooba Mufti’s Cabinet.
Sources privy to the investigation insist that the NIA teams were assiduously pursuing their exercise without intervention from political quarters. According to them, the businessman could be arrested if a slew of charges against him, including his acquisition of properties at several places allegedly in partnership with a former Director General of Punjab Police, proved to be correct.
They also insist that the connections between the separatist-turned-mainstream politician had snapped over some differences between the two long back.
This particular businessman happens to be the brother-in-law of two government officials who are residents of Tarhama village in Tangmarg, on Srinagar-Gulmarg road. One of them is reportedly an Assistant Director in Department of Industries while as his younger brother is a cardiologist working as a medical office with Health Department. Their third brother is a local chemist.
Official sources revealed to The Quint that the Assistant Director’s daughter is married in Dubai and the couple were currently at their Tangmarg house. It was not immediately clear if anything incriminating had been seized from the premises as the operation was still in progress.
Officials associated with the operation said that “some more raids” would be conducted by the NIA sleuths on Wednesday.
On condition of anonymity, they said that several business families, with their links to Delhi and Dubai-based hawala operators, were under NIA’s scanner and details of their import-export operations were being collected with the advantage of human intelligence, technical support and purportedly sensational disclosures made by a number of separatist activists already arrested by the Central agency.
Separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Ahmad Shah alias Fantoosh along with top functionaries of the Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference Peer Saifullah, Meraj-ud-din Kalwal and Ayaz Akbar Banday have been formally arrested by NIA.
They are currently in a jail in Delhi along with another top separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s public relations officer Aftab Hilali Shah alias Shahidul Islam, a break-away JKLF activist Farooq Ahmad Dar alias Bitta Karate and Geelani’s former confidante Nayeem Khan.
Another top separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah has been detained separately in connection with a money-laundering case previously registered by Enforcement Directorate and remanded to judicial custody in the national capital.
The NIA has also been questioning Geelani’s sons, Dr Nayeem and Naseem, though both have been let off after several rounds of interrogation in New Delhi.
Naseem is working with Forest faculty of Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Science and Technology. Family sources said that both have been asked to return to New Delhi for follow up to the investigation on 18 September.
(Admed Ali Fayyaz is a senior journalist based in Srinagar.)
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