NIA says seized terror funds, letterheads of Hizb and LeT
antiterrorism officials searched the homes and offices of separatist leaders in Kashmir on Saturday as part of an investigation into whether money from Pakistan was being used to fund violent street protests against the Indian government.
In what is the first such crackdown on financing of separatists, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided 26 places across Kashmir, Delhi and Haryana, allegedly recovering letterheads of Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), laptops, mobile phones, gold jewellery and more than ₹2.5 crore in cash.
The early morning swoop saw officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the nodal agency to investigate money laundering, joining the raids.
“Our teams have raided 18 places in Kashmir and seven in Delhi and one near the DelhiHaryana border,” said NIA chief Sharad Kumar.
Sources said the locations raided in Old Delhi’s Ballimaran and Chandni Chowk belonged to suspected hawala traders, who helped channel funds from Pakistan-based sources such as LeT and other individuals to separatists.
The raids began after the NIA turned a preliminary enquiry into the sources of funding of separatist leaders such as Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Naeem Khan and Farooq Ahmed Dar into a
We are working for a permanent solution. I have said this with utmost responsibility, after much thinking... We have some plans and are working in this direction and will find a solid solution in future. It may take some time
first information report (FIR) or a formal investigation.
Reacting to the raids, Geelani said the NIA action was part of a “narrative to defame the freedom movement in Kashmir”. His spokesperson Ayaz Akbar denied any cash had been recovered from them.
“It’s a tactic to pressurise Geelani sahib. It happened in 2002 when one of his sons-in-law was targeted and falsely implicated in cases. Now they are doing it again,’’ said Akbar.
The NIA officers targeted several separatist leaders and businessmen, as well as Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Fantoosh, as they looked for evidence of them receiving funds from Hafiz Saeed, who heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) group, and other Pakistan-based militant outfits.
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The Election Commission’s open challenge for political parties to prove the alleged rigging of electronic voting machines (EVMs) went unanswered on Saturday, with nobody coming forward to demonstrate how they can be manipulated.
While representatives of two political parties – the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) – turned up at the event, they left after making technical enquiries on how EVMs function. The poll panel said it hoped the controversy would die down, now that Opposition parties have not succeeded in coming up with any evidence of EVM tampering.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) refused to accept the poll panel’s challenge, with party chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj dubbing it as “mere eyewash”. It instead decided to conduct a parallel EVM tampering challenge, for which the registration process has already been launched on the party website. No date has been fixed for the event yet.
“AAP will conduct a parallel hackathon/demonstration of its own EVM prototype under the same conditions proposed by the Election Commission – only visual inspection and pressing of keys will be allowed. No other hardware or software manipulation will be allowed,” said Bhardwaj.
Though the poll panel claimed that both the NCP and CPI-M were “satisfied” with the demonstration, representatives of the Sharad Pawar-led party said they still harbour doubts.
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THE AAM AADMI PARTY HAS DECIDED TO CONDUCT A PARALLEL CHALLENGE FOR WHICH THE REGISTRATION PROCESS HAS ALREADY BEEN LAUNCHED